Pretty ironic that the same administration that's fighting to take away our 2nd amendment rights
Actually, the Democrats have damaged the 1st Amendment more than the 2nd Amendment since '06, but that's another story. But agreed ...
is the exact same administration that supplied known drug cartels with over 600 firearms as part of Fast and Furious.
Which is why three (3) ATF agents eventually "whistleblew," despite retribution and career destruction, when a Democratic Congresswoman from California held up one of them, and said straw purchasers were to blame. It was the US federal government actually "caught in the act" of subverting a civil right to turn the populace against it, in utter defiance of its primary purpose.
To this day anyone who downplays, much more defends, this is literally at odds with freedom. Yes, "gun running" was a pilot program that started under W., but didn't produce any dividends. Then it was greatly expanded, not to actually catch the cartels, but ... as would come true ... to provide a "smoking gun incident." Then it backfired, despite virtually destroying the careers of these three (3) agents.
Both the ATF and FBI have learned to "adapt" to this now, forestalling such subversion of civil rights.
E.g., when the administration went after M855 -- the overwhelmingly most popular 5.56mm round in civilian hands, not even used by the US military any more, as its effectiveness has regularly been called into question -- the ATF smartly put out a public "Request for Comments." When 98% of the comments came back "against," mostly with PhD and other intellectuals giving hard facts why it wouldn't do anything but drive up A) cause the overwhelming majority of civilians to have to return already purchased ammunition and B) wouldn't do anything, as all 5.56mm rounds, l like virtually any rifle round, can penetrate NATO Block IIA body armor (every rifle round created in the last 130 years is virtually a "cop killer" by sheer, basic physics), it gave the ATF the "return ammunition" to show it was a political move by the administration that had 0 scientific and legal merit.
This is the
main reason why every time ATF and FBI funding increases come up for everything from enforcement to NCIC improvements, every Congressman and woman wants guarantees it will actually be used for existing law enforcement, like improving the accuracy of the NCIC and other, existing, proven systems that have lots of erroneous information -- including checks that would have prevented 2 of the last 4 mass shooters from even purchasing a gun (there is no "loophole").
Yes, I fully understand this. It, along with the jailing of reporters in '06 and tapping AP phones in '09 before the alleged "Korean leak" happened, is why the Democrats have flung past the Republicans on undermining civil liberties, much to the no joy of the courts. But no one talks about that in the media.
In fact, even Maddow on MSNBC attributed the jailing of a reporter to W., even though it was the Democratic-led committee that did it, when they were investigating Libby. Coincidentally, it was Armitage, not Libby, who leaked Plame's name, and when the journalist was released, he confirmed it was Armitage, neither of which were ever charged, only Libby. To this day, most Americans believe Libby was found guilty of leaking Plame's name, and don't know he was only found guilty of lying to a Grand Jury (withholding Armitage's name for 3 years). Same charge and conviction as Bill Clinton, who was actually convicted of lying about more than just Monica.