Almost immediately after the House Oversight Committee voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in Contempt of Congress, Democrats and mainstream media personalities flooded the airwaves with accusations of racism, election-year politics, and GOP attempts to get rid of Holder to protect state-level voter ID laws. Appearing on MSNBC, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) even said: “They are holding Attorney General Holder in contempt for doing his job.”
These things got me to thinking–what would these same politicians and media personalities have said if a privately-owned business had done the things our DOJ, ATF, and other government agencies did via Fast and Furious?
What if Walmart, the “largest seller of firearms and ammunition in America,” had knowingly sold 2,500 firearms to straw purchasers with the intent of having those purchasers carry those guns across an international border and sell them to drug cartel members in Mexico?
And,what if at least two (but possibly three or more) of the guns were used in the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent while an untold number of the weapons were used to kill hundreds–literally hundreds–of Mexican citizens?
Moreover, what if one of the straw purchasers, who bought over 700 guns, was on food stamps and Walmart knew it, yet they sold him guns in exchange for bags of cash anyway?
What if some of the 2,500 hundred guns were recovered, but more than 1,000 were not, and what if an untold number of those unrecovered guns were believed to be in the hands of criminals in American cities on our Southwest border?
And lastly, what if explanations given by Walmart board members regarding the authorization of this straw-purchasing, gun-walking program were in conflict with the testimony given by their executive? And what if both they and their executive snubbed their noses at Congressional requests for documentation that would explain who knew what and when?
What would happen to Walmart if that company did these things?
We all know what would happen. Both their C.E.O. and ranking board members would be handcuffed and frog-marched out to paddy wagons in broad daylight, then transported to prison cells that would house them for the rest of their lives.
And Rep. Pelosi wouldn’t even think about saying, “They are treating the C.E.O. of Walmart this way for doing his job.”