Here’s the video of my appearance with the lovely Jane McGarry on NBC DFW 5′s Nonstop Nightly.
I can’t embed it so follow this link right here.
Plausibly Undeniable
Here’s the video of my appearance with the lovely Jane McGarry on NBC DFW 5′s Nonstop Nightly.
I can’t embed it so follow this link right here.
Here’s a screen cap of the smoking gun email.
Source and more detail on the story here.
I’ll be discussing this on NBC DFW 5 tonight with Jane McGarry.
UPDATE: Because of the raid on the DA’s office by the FBI, my segment got bumped until Thursday night. Stay tuned.
On Jane McGarry’s “Nonstop Nightly” on Channel 5 (I think, check nbcdfw.com) to discuss the newest blunder from the Department of Justice — their cover up of the Operation Gun Walker cluster eff. To deal with the 2,500 firearms the ATF let get across the border to Mexican gangs, their solution is more gun control.
Brilliant move from the grease trap of law enforcement that is the ATF.
(What do I wear? Bowtie and fez (fezzes and bowties are cool) or a Reno 911 t-shirt?)
My latest column is up at Guns.com. It deals with the issue of guns in church. Here’s a preview.
For many – especially gun control folks– churches and guns go together like, well, children and guns. Christians on both sides of the pew can cite dueling scripture verses.
Yes, Jesus said, “But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.†Matthew 5:39 (KJV)
Of course He also said, “Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take [it], and likewise [his] scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.†Luke 22:36 (KJV)
I’m not walking on these waters, because all of that should mean jack and squat when it comes to writing laws on gun rights. Why? Well, I’d quote the First Amendment here and the implied separation of church and state, but that’s something I trust all our readers know.
Not doing a perp walk or being ambushed by a reporter. I’ll be discussing a gun rights bill currently under debate in Austin.
Check it out if you can. It’s going to be sometime in the 9 p.m. broadcast.
(Question: Bow tie or no? I wear a bow tie now. Bow ties are cool.)
My column about why the Second Amendment and the rights of CHL holders shouldn’t be considered void on college campuses is up at Guns.com.
Guns.com is a new site I’m writing for and there are a few bugs as with any new publication. So forgive a few editing errors that pop up.
Here’s a taste.
“I was shot through the left thigh, both hips and right shoulder and I survived by playing dead,†said Colin Goddard, a survivor of the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 who is now a student at the University of Texas in Austin.
He told his emotional story to try to sway Texas lawmakers to reject a coming bill in the 2011 legislative session that will add one more place that concealed handgun license holders are allowed while armed – college campuses.
“I was there that day. That was the craziest day of my life with one person with two guns. I can’t imagine what it would have been like with multiple students with multiple guns,†he said.
I can imagine it. And it’s not some Pollyanna scenario. It’s based on the facts on the ground at Virginia Tech in 2007
and in Texas in 1991 and 1966.
But before I get into that, I have to tell you this isn’t new territory for me. Nor is it for Texas. Texans have been fighting an incremental fight to expand gun rights that started with the massacre at a Luby’s in Killeen, Texas.
The massacre and its aftermath should be required reading for all sides in the gun debate.
And yet they blame gun shows. This is the Gunwalker scandal. The ATF is the grease trap of law enforcement.
ATF agent says “Fast and Furious” program let guns “walk” into hands of Mexican drug cartels with aim of tracking and breaking a big case
WASHINGTON – Federal agent John Dodson says what he was asked to do was beyond belief.
He was intentionally letting guns go to Mexico?
“Yes ma’am,” Dodson told CBS News. “The agency was.”
An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms senior agent assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010, Dodson’s job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen.
Investigators call the tactic letting guns “walk.” In this case, walking into the hands of criminals who would use them in Mexico and the United States.
Sharyl Attkisson’s original “Gunrunner” report
Center for Public Integrity report
Dodson’s bosses say that never happened. Now, he’s risking his job to go public.
“I’m boots on the ground in Phoenix, telling you we’ve been doing it every day since I’ve been here,” he said. “Here I am. Tell me I didn’t do the things that I did. Tell me you didn’t order me to do the things I did. Tell me it didn’t happen. Now you have a name on it. You have a face to put with it. Here I am. Someone now, tell me it didn’t happen.”
Agent Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret from Mexico.
ATF named the case “Fast and Furious.”
Surveillance video obtained by CBS News shows suspected drug cartel suppliers carrying boxes of weapons to their cars at a Phoenix gun shop. The long boxes shown in the video being loaded in were AK-47-type assault rifles.
So it turns out ATF not only allowed it – they videotaped it.
Documents show the inevitable result: The guns that ATF let go began showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. And as ATF stood by watching thousands of weapons hit the streets… the Fast and Furious group supervisor noted the escalating Mexican violence.
One e-mail noted, “958 killed in March 2010 … most violent month since 2005.” The same e-mail notes: “Our subjects purchased 359 firearms during March alone,” including “numerous Barrett .50 caliber rifles.”
Dodson feels that ATF was partly to blame for the escalating violence in Mexico and on the border. “I even asked them if they could see the correlation between the two,” he said. “The more our guys buy, the more violence we’re having down there.”
Senior agents including Dodson told CBS News they confronted their supervisors over and over.
Their answer, according to Dodson, was, “If you’re going to make an omelette, you’ve got to break some eggs.”
There was so much opposition to the gun walking, that an ATF supervisor issued an e-mail noting a “schism” among the agents. “Whether you care or not people of rank and authority at HQ are paying close attention to this case…we are doing what they envisioned…. If you don’t think this is fun you’re in the wrong line of work… Maybe the Maricopa County jail is hiring detention officers and you can get $30,000 … to serve lunch to inmates…”
“We just knew it wasn’t going to end well. There’s just no way it could,” Dodson said.
On Dec. 14, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down. Dodson got the bad news from a colleague.
According to Dodson, “They said, ‘Did you hear about the border patrol agent?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And they said ‘Well it was one of the Fast and Furious guns.’ There’s not really much you can say after that.”
Two assault rifles ATF had let go nearly a year before were found at Terry’s murder.
Dodson said, “I felt guilty. I mean it’s crushing. I don’t know how to explain it.”
Sen. Grassley began investigating after his office spoke to Dodson and a dozen other ATF sources — all telling the same story.
Read Sen. Grassley’s letter to the attorney general
The response was “practically zilch,” Grassley said. “From the standpoint that documents we want – we have not gotten them. I think it’s a case of stonewalling.”
Dodson said he hopes that speaking out helps Terry’s family. They haven’t been told much of anything about his murder – or where the bullet came from.
“First of all, I’d tell them that I’m sorry. Second of all, I’d tell them I’ve done everything that I can for them to get the truth,” Dodson said. “After this, I don’t know what else I can do. But I hope they get it.”
Dodson said they never did take down a drug cartels. However, he said thousands of Fast and Furious weapons are still out there and will be claiming victims on both sides of the border for years to come.
Late tonight, the ATF said it will convene a panel to look into its national firearms trafficking strategy. But it refused to comment specifically on Sharyl’s report.
Statement from Kenneth E. Melson, Acting Director, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives:
“The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) will ask a multi-disciplinary panel of law enforcement professionals to review the bureau’s current firearms trafficking strategies employed by field division managers and special agents. This review will enable ATF to maximize its effectiveness when undertaking complex firearms trafficking investigations and prosecutions. It will support the goals of ATF to stem the illegal flow of firearms to Mexico and combat firearms trafficking in the United States.”
My column is up at Guns.com, a new site that I’m writing for now. I look at the new movement for open carry.
Is carrying a gun openly a threat to those around you? Is it a provocation? Should it make people around you uncomfortable? Does Fobus make paddle holsters in colors other than black, because if nothing else, open carry is a threat to my fashion sense?
Read my full column here at Guns.com.
(I’ll be honest, I give this one a low B. I’m out of practice on writing opinion columns so it will take a few to get back in the groove.)
Let’s say I have this cake. It is a very nice cake, with “GUN RIGHTS†written across the top in lovely floral icing. Along you come and say, “Give me that cake.â€
I say, “No, it’s my cake.â€
You say, “Let’s compromise. Give me half.†I respond by asking what I get out of this compromise, and you reply that I get to keep half of my cake.
Okay, we compromise. Let us call this compromise The National Firearms Act of 1934.
There I am with my half of the cake, and you walk back up and say, “Give me that cake.â€
I say, “No, it’s my cake.â€
You say, “Let’s compromise.†What do I get out of this compromise? Why, I get to keep half of what’s left of the cake I already own.
So, we have your compromise — let us call this one the Gun Control Act of 1968 — and I’m left holding what is now just a quarter of my cake.
And I’m sitting in the corner with my quarter piece of cake, and here you come again. You want my cake. Again.
This time you take several bites — we’ll call this compromise the Clinton Executive Orders — and I’m left with about a tenth of what has always been MY DAMN CAKE and you’ve got nine-tenths of it.
Then we compromised with the Lautenberg Act (nibble, nibble), the HUD/Smith and Wesson agreement (nibble, nibble), the Brady Law (NOM NOM NOM), the School Safety and Law Enforcement Improvement Act (sweet tap-dancing Freyja, my finger!)
I’m left holding crumbs of what was once a large and satisfying cake, and you’re standing there with most of MY CAKE, making anime eyes and whining about being “reasonableâ€, and wondering “why we won’t compromiseâ€.
I’m done with being reasonable, and I’m done with compromise. Nothing about gun control in this country has ever been “reasonable†nor a genuine “compromise.”
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