The Necropolitan Sentinel

Matters continue to get stranger and stranger in the Gunwalker/”Fast and Furious” scandal, which some prominent Democrats are attempting to turn into a referendum on gun control. And, we got that: guns are bad, and the Administration attempted to demonstrate this by conveying a bunch of them into the hands of Mexican drug cartels–which got a lot of people killed. But those who promote gun liberties among ordinary citizens were never about shipping firearms, wholesale, into rings of criminals.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

After yesterday’s news of the deal between Senators Pat Leahy and Charles Grassley to get documents and testimony from ATF chief Kenneth Melson on Operation Fast and Furious, it seemed as though Democrats might finally take the scandal of the gunrunning fiasco seriously. Alas, Elijah Cummings and House Democrats appear uninterested in abuses of government power, incompetence, and potential cover-ups at AFT and the Department of Justice. In fact, they want to turn the probe into an argument for expanding government control of firearms:

The top Democrat on a House investigative committee is broadening an inquiry into a botched gun-tracing operation, called Operation Fast and Furious, to include a look at American gun laws.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the leading Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, released a report early Thursday titled “Outgunned,” that details how Bureau for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents say gun laws need to be tightened for them to fight organized crime along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Why, yes! The right response for Congress to a fiasco where[in] the ATF and DoJ refused to stop guns from flowing over the border is to give them more power to stop American citizens from buying guns in the first place! Certainly, the federal law-enforcement agencies have proven their worth in Operation Fast and Furious and should be given even more opportunities to intervene in the exercise of Second Amendment rights!

That’s the World According To Elijah Cummings, anyway.

The tactic here is transparent — Cummings and his fellow Democrats want to stage a distraction from the stupidity and incompetence that Fast and Furious revealed at the ATF and DoJ. . . .

If they’re that desperate for a distraction, then Darrell Issa must be close to exposing something rather significant in the DoJ.

Read the whole thing, which is a mini-roundup.

And, The Hill:

Obama said he would comment further on the issue once the investigation is completed.

“My attorney general has made clear that he certainly would not have ordered gun running to be able to pass through into Mexico,” Obama said.

“The investigation is still pending. I’m not going to comment on a current investigation. I’ve made very clear my views that would not be an appropriate step by the ATF, and we’ve got to find out how that happened.

“As soon as the investigation is completed, I think appropriate actions will be taken,” Obama said.

But Issa, who held a charged hearing on the issue earlier this month, has indicated that responsibility for the operation rests with some of the highest officials at the Justice Department and the ATF.

At the hearing, members of slain ATF Agent Brian Terry’s family testified. Two of the guns found at the Arizona crime scene where Terry was killed last year were sold through the Fast and Furious operation. It remains unclear whether the guns were used to kill Terry.

“President Obama’s remarks today on Operation Fast and Furious were disappointing,” Issa said in a statement.

Finally, Say Uncle has another link-rich roundup you need to look at:

Because ATF allowed guns to be smuggled into Mexico and those guns were later used in murders and showed up at crime scenes in US neighborhoods, we clearly need to pass more gun laws. You know, to better equip law enforcement to combat this sort of thing. Why, it’s almost like it went exactly according to ATF’s plan.

Michael Bane: The ONLY way Fast & Furious makes sense is as a direct attack on the Second Amendment. Otherwise, it makes no sense at all.

UPDATE: Ed has this PJM article linked, but I wanted to link Bob Owens directly (via Ed and Glenn Reynolds, who calls this “Operation Distraction,” and suggests that the whole affair is “a reminder for gun owners of where the Administration stands”).

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