David Frum at The Daily Beast uses his frustration about the lack of gun control momentum in the aftermath of the Aurora shootings to take an incoherent swipe at the Republicans attention to the Fast and Furious scandal.
The right-wing theory of the case in the Fast & Furious scandal is that the Obama administration hoped to generate demand for gun control in the United States by allowing the export of deadly guns to Mexico.
Yet demand for gun control does not respond even to mass murders inside the United States.
If you were a secret gun-snatcher, would you ever imagine that gun crime inside Mexico would produce a better result?
More plausible conspiracy theories, please.
We all (except for David Frum) know gun control was part of Operation Fast and Furious. Sharyl Attkisson released emails December 7, 2011 between ATF officials about how to use statistics from Fast & Furious to implement tougher gun control laws:
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.
CBS News goes on to say:
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.
Unfortunately this plan went horribly wrong. The operation allowed 2,000 guns to walk into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. These guns have been linked to the deaths of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and 300 Mexicans and were found at twelve crime scenes across America. There were no tracers in the guns, and the ATF made no effort to interdict the guns. Instead, the only plausible place to recover the guns would be at crime scenes – a crime scene like the death of Agent Terry.
The true purpose was to gin up gun fatality statistics so they would have more plausibility when the administration started infringing on the second amendment. Mr. Frum doesn’t let facts get in the way of his obvious anti-gun agenda and disinterest in the Fast and Furious scandal.