One of the biggest pet peeves of your humble correspondent is so-called journalists who continue to absurdly claim that there is no evidence that one of the purposes for gunwalking in Operation Fast and Furious was to advance a gun control agenda. Last week the culprit was Jillian Rayfield of Rolling Stone and now Steve Kornacki of Salon and MSNBC is the latest liberal to display his reality challenged assertion on this subject:
The question is why the NRA has decided to emphasize the Holder vote. The group’s official explanation, believe it or not, involves conspiracy theory – the idea that the Fast and Furious gun-walking program that led to the death of a border patrol agent in 2010 was actually “a political attack on the 2nd Amendment and that the Justice Department facilitated a crime to further their gun control political agenda.”
That was NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre’s assertion, and it’s been echoed by several Republicans in Congress, including Darrell Issa, the Oversight Committee chairman who has been leading the contempt push. On national television on Sunday, Issa said:
“We have emails from people involved in this who are talking about using what they’re finding here to support the — basically — assault weapons ban or greater reporting. So, chicken or egg? We don’t know which came first, we probably never will.”
Needless to say, there’s no evidence to support this kind of outlandish theorizing. Not that this is anything new when it comes to the NRA and the Obama administration.
No evidence to support this kind of "outlandish theorizing?" Really, Steve? Did you not even bother to check out the emails that Issa was referring to? Had you done even a quick Google search you would have easily found those emails. And who were making the email assertions about pushing a gun control agenda? ATF officials themselves. This story was not revealed by some "rightwing gun nuts" but by reporter Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News:
Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation "Fast and Furious" to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.
In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the "big fish." But ATF whistleblowers told CBS News and Congress it was a dangerous practice called "gunwalking," and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
ATF officials didn't intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called "Demand Letter 3". That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or "long guns." Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.
On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF's Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:
"Bill - can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks."
There is plenty more information along these lines in Attkisson's report so please take copious notes, Steve, in order to avoid the embarrassment of being exposed again by the Newsbusters Eye of Sauron. Unfortunately, Kornacki might be too far gone down the road of Moonbat punditry to even care judging by his recent bit of ranting:
So, you take, you know, prominent, you know, black lawyer and you put him in charge of the Obama Justice Department and I think that's, you know, to people who sort of traffic in that sort of thing, you know, it really is kind of a lightening rod.
