It appears NBC’s Bob Costas spoke too fast and made many conservative Americans including gun owners and the NRA furious. It happened the day after the murder-suicide involving Jovan Belcher of the Kansas City Chiefs. Not only was Belcher’s live-in girlfriend, 22 year old Kasandra Perkins, a victim, but the couple’s three month old baby daughter Zoey, is now an orphan. Most of us know Costas opportunistically used his halftime segment during “Sunday Night Football” to lobby for stronger gun-control laws.
Second Amendment advocate Ted Nugent ripped Costas and used Twitter to share a few thoughts such as: “Hey Bob Costas, we all know that obesity is a direct result of the proliferation of spoons & forks.” And another, “We thought Bob Costas was smarter than that. Only fools blame tools instead of human failings. Shame Bob,” and another, “Blaming guns for crime is like blaming helmets for head butts…”
Making his case, Costas quoted Kansas City-based writer Jason Whitlock stating that he, “said it so well that we may as well just quote or paraphrase from the end of his article.” Costas continued, “Our current gun culture,” Whitlock wrote, “ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.”
“Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and their possible connection to football, will be analyzed… But here,” wrote Jason Whitlock, “is what I believe: If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”
Bob Costas believes what Whitlock believes, but according to the American Association of Suicidology, about half of 2010′s suicides were by firearm. The other roughly 50 percent were by such things as hanging and poisoning. To hypothetically say if someone didn’t own a gun, they would never have acted out in violent anger or taken their own life is absurd.
Let’s look at one more example. According to CNS News, the Chicago Tribune reported there were 192 shootings in that city throughout the month of November – a 49 percent increase from 2011! Police records also reveal that shootings increased more than 11 percent in 2012 compared with a year earlier. Total homicides in Chicago rose to 480 with one month to go in 2012 which is a 21 percent increase in just one year.
Rahm Emmanuel believes he’s doing the right thing, but Second Amendment supporters say he has blood on his hands. Like many cities with strict gun laws, the disarming of law-abiding citizens doesn’t take guns out of the hands of criminals and evildoers. What gun-control laws often do is leave innocent victims vulnerable.
This brings us back to the Fast and Furious scandal and how the media prevented it from becoming Obama’s Watergate. We just learned another member of the Justice Department resigned this week. Gary Grindler, Attorney General Eric Holder’s chief of staff, will serve his last day at the Justice Department today, Wednesday. As deputy attorney general, Grindler oversaw the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which led the failed “gun-walking” operation.
A report from House Oversight Committee chairman Darryl Issa recommended disciplinary action against Grindler and 13 other officials; Grindler was accused of “passing the buck” and failing to take charge of the department. With the gun control issue at center stage again, it’s important to revisit a scandal the media failed to cover.
In June 2012, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was voted in contempt of Congress by 259 members of the House of Representatives for stonewalling the investigation into the Operation Fast and Furious scandal. In all of American history, no sitting Cabinet member has been held in contempt of Congress until now. President Obama even stepped in and used his “executive privilege” to protect Eric Holder. If Holder did nothing wrong, why did he need protection and why not cooperate with the investigation? What’s Holder hiding?
The media keeps glossing over corruption, and those of us who are informed have watched in astonishment. The Obama administration defies laws on marriage, immigration, gambling, marijuana, and pornography, and conservatives are fed up. In this case, American guns were used in the deaths of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata, and approximately 300 Mexican citizens. The gun used in Terry’s death was purchased in Arizona, and the gun used in Zapata’s death was purchased in Texas. Both were “Fast and Furious” guns.
From 2009 to 2011, the Obama administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ran Operation Fast and Furious (a.k.a. Project Gunrunner), a program to track U.S.-purchased firearms headed to Mexican drug cartels in order to get to cartel heads.
Critics believe the real purpose of the operation was to undermine the Second Amendment by vilifying gun owners and sellers so the government could enforce stricter gun laws in America. Either way, it went terribly wrong.
One problem with the plan was that our DOJ didn’t even notify Mexican authorities that thousands of semi-automatic firearms were being sold to people in Arizona thought to have links to Mexican drug cartels. ATF agents “were ordered not to intercept the smugglers, but rather to let the guns ‘walk’ across the U.S.-Mexican border and into the hands of Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.”
Fast and Furious was botched when over 1,400 guns, including AK-47’s, were lost. The operation was halted in December 2010 after two weapons the department lost track of were found at the murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. His family has since filed a lawsuit charging that the top federal prosecutor in Phoenix lied to them about the guns found at the crime scene in an attempt to hide the weapons’ connection to the ATF’s operation. The media has made this a political issue, and Holder has even accused Republicans of racism.
Rep. Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) requested the Justice Department release thousands of documents related to the inner workings of Fast and Furious. The Justice Department delivered less than ten percent of the 80,000 documents. Issa also released a report suggesting top DOJ officials had extensive knowledge of and involvement in Fast and Furious than previously acknowledged. Writing for Forbes, author Frank Minter asked, “Is it even conceivable that Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t know about this secret program? And if he didn’t, shouldn’t he have?”
However, in February 2011, the Justice Department sent a letter to Congress denying the operation even existed! Ten months later, the Department retracted the letter. Then, Eric Holder insisted he did not even know about the program until early 2011. After months of investigation, the Justice Department finally acknowledged the allegations were true. Why did it take nearly nine months for the Department to acknowledge Holder’s earlier denials were false?
In other words, people died and Holder lied. Why did senior Justice Department officials who knew about and received briefings on the operation fail to stop it? By the way, Gary Grindler isn’t the only personnel change in the DOJ. Former ATF Director Kenneth Melson began talking to investigators and pointed to a cover up. Melson was moved to a new position with the ATF. At least four more ATF officials were also reassigned or promoted by the Obama administration to other positions in Washington D.C.
Naturally, Holder has not only received continued support from President Obama, but White House spokesman Jay Carney said, “He absolutely stands by the Attorney General, thinks he is doing an excellent job.” Can American citizens still have confidence in their own chief law enforcement agency, the Department of Justice?
We should now be seriously considering whether this current administration is above the law. Similar to the flagrant corruption over the Benghazi tragedy, even if the truth is finally exposed and Holder resigns over Fast and Furious, the media successfully protected the president. Regardless of American deaths, whether a murder-suicide or corrupt policy and politics, we can conclude it’s not the tool or weapon that is responsible, but the people who misuse them.
Photo Credit: European Parliament (Creative Commons)
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IT IS disgusting that this administration can do anything at all yet not have to face up to it. In the past a person could have just tripped a person and it would make the first page of the papers. Somebody must change this as we are well on the way to a dictatorship. I wonder just how bad this administration can get before there is public outrage.
We will all be able to talk about our outrage when standing in the Obama entitlement bread line.
Gun Control isn’t about Guns, it’s about control of most of those who have them, it robs people of basic rights, and it destroys the entire meaning of the second amendment, “Being necessary for the security of a Free State”, the purpose or THIS Amendment was to “PREVENT” disarming the people just prior to Tyrannizing them (US)
Remember the good ol’ days when a legal POTUS National Security wiretap became illegal? Or what a POTUS does with his cigar became a National crises? Now those were serious issues!
Remember the good ol says when a legal POTUS wire tap became illegal? Or what a POTUS does with his cigar became a national crisses?
Holder, like obama, is a constant liar, about everything. They don’t know how to tell the truth. Then if questioned he has the nerve to call it racism. Well I feel that the first black president of the U.S., barack obama, and his black attorney general, eric holder, are the most corrupt, lying, tyrannous, in the history of the U.S.
This is why black people should never be in positions of power. Just look at the woman in Detroit and the one with a phone, and the one that just knows the boon will pay her gas and lights and the one in the White House that want`s to be a Dictator. .
Let’s get this straight, the people running the (in)justice department and their superiors can ignore the laws they find inconvenient? By rights that means I can ignore the laws I don’t like. This opens up a whole world of possibilities…… How about an open season on elected and appointed officials who violate the Constitution?
If the liberals and Obama really want to control guns then why is his partner in crime, Holder, wholesaling guns to Mexico and most likely they were also responsible for the guns that killed the ambassador in Libya and the other three Americans ?
“If Holder did nothing wrong, why did he need protection and why not cooperate with the investigation? What’s Holder hiding?” To quote Obama, “The only people who are afraid of the truth are those who have something to hide”. And he knows more about this than anyone else alive, except perhaps Eric Holder, Rahm Emanuel, and Valerie Jarret.
Holder and obama continue to bash Americans if they don’t agree with them on any thing and use the racist theme. They are indeed the racists and most of the liberals that are upset that some one should disagree from their lifestyle, etc. The liberals want to be all black and want obama to be all black so they will have any thing to spew there ugliness about. These two what I call animals have the mentality to destroy our country and will stop at nothing to do so. They have spent years worming their way into our system with the help of other commies and socialists. The Fast and Furious plan was set up by holder, obama and his atf buddies and now the enemies are being paid again by the tax payerss. Our America is gone because the younger ppl want the world to be safe as they have no idea what they have done to destroy what our military and forefathers worked for and arent capable of understanding and their pretend worlds will soon crash on them and we will be like the European countries like Greece and the muslims and commies will rul us. Yes there is evil out there and parents wanting their every thing for their children have not done right by them to pretend we are all safe
The press holds the keys here. The average uninformed American listens with only half an ear to what they say and by in large accept them as authorities. During Watergate, they were out for blood and Nixon rightly resigned. Trent Lott is crucified by the press for almost nothing. Ted Kennedy kills a young woman and ends up running for president. Robert Byrd, a KKK member, doesn’t have a problem using the “N” word and he gets a pass. They are a despicable lot. They are beyond complicit in the coverups, they are enablers and propagandists, evil people rivaling Goebbels.