Fisking The Obfuscators

The Obfuscators, otherwise known as the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, issued a report today entitled Outgunned which sought to shift the blame for Operation Fast and Furious from ATF to gun control laws. As I said yesterday, they are merely diversionary tactics to divert attention from the Obama appointees in the Department of Justice (and maybe DHS) who more than likely authorized this project in order to build support for more gun control in America.

It looks like CNN and the LA Times are buying into it which doesn't say much for the intelligence and integrity of much of mainstream journalism. CNN took much of what Rep. Elijah Cummings and the rest of Democrats at the "forum" said as gospel and then reported that:

Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the committee, told a forum on illegal firearms trafficking he organized Thursday that he knew the recommendations of the new report "will face stiff resistance in Congress and beyond."

"Before today's forum even began, it was criticized as a conspiracy to confiscate the firearms of law-abiding citizens, which is ridiculous," he said.

Cummings also said he and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-New York, would introduce legislation on the reforms called for in the report.

Christine Mai-Duc of the LA Times Washington Bureau ran with an story entitled "Democrats seek crackdown on gun trafficking". 

Cummings and Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) said that although the investigation into Fast and Furious was "very important," they were looking for solutions to the broader problems of gun trafficking in Mexico. In an accompanying report released by Cummings, the Democrats said authorities from the Mexican federal police had told them that as many as 80% of the weapons recovered at Mexican crime scenes are traced to the United States.

On a side note, Carolyn Maloney - not be confused with the Queen Bee of gun control, Carolyn McCarthy - is a Greensboro, North Carolina native and graduate of Greensboro College. While my hometown is well rid of her and the people of New York were stupid enough to elect her, she supposedly plans to introduce legislation to "combat trafficking" despite the fact that everything involved in Operation Fast and Furious was already a Federal offense. Go figure.

Fortunately, Bob Owens in an article Pajamas Media tears down the Democrats' report part by part. He fisks the obfuscators.

Bob notes that Rep. Cummings and the rest of his panel ignore what is at the heart of Project Gunwalker: the deaths of Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata and the weapons that were allowed to be walked by ATF. Briefly summarizing, the report downplays the serious penalties for engaging in straw purchases, it ignores the role of Obama-appointed U.S. Attorneys and their offices in not wanting to prosecute these crimes, and then they repeat the 90% myth again. They also insist on calling semi-automatic AR-15s and AK-47s "military-grade" weapons based upon their cosmetics and not their performance.

Bob concludes:

“Outgunned: Law Enforcement Agents Warn Congress They Lack Adequate Tools to Counter Illegal Firearms Trafficking” is a purely political document created to advance a dishonest gun control agenda, even in the face of 152+ deaths caused by this same sort of duplicity.

Rep. Elijah Cummings should be ashamed to have issued this report, and he should be pressed to answer for it.

 Indeed he should as should all that are associated with it.