Outgoing AG Eric Holder Cites as “Personal Failure” Lack of Additional Gun Control

As Eric Holder's disastrous reign as attorney general comes to a close, he counts among his and his anti-gun administration's biggest failures the inability to further restrict American's Second Amendment rights.  Considering his track record (we're still dealing with the ramifications of the infamous Fast and Furious debacle, among other things), that's saying something.

Anti-gunners have long used the tactic of exploiting tragedy to further their agenda, and in that regard, Holder continues steadfastly to stick to the script.  As reported in the Washington Times, Holder said in a recent CNN interview that “the inability to pass reasonable gun safety laws after the Newtown massacre is something that weighs heavily on my mind.”   Holder further said, “the thought that we could not translate that horror into reasonable — I mean, really reasonable gun safety measures that were supported by the vast majority of the American people is for me something that I take personally as a failure.”

Despite Holder's assertion of Americans' support for more gun control laws, in December 2013--a year after Sandy Hook--a CNN poll showed that support for gun control had dropped by six points since January of that year, and that a majority of Americans opposed stricter gun laws. Meanwhile, even the president and vice-president themselves acknowledged that nothing that had been proposed would “fundamentally alter” the chance of another mass casualty event or “stop every act of violence and evil.” In other words, the proposals did not seek to address what really happened on that awful day. Rather, they merely sought to use the heartache it caused to advance a pre-existing agenda to, as Holder once said, make gun owners “cower” like shamed smokers and to “just really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.”

Holder's "disappointment" serves as another reminder that those who would trample our rights remain determined to push their gun control agenda and will exploit any occasion to do so. They don't care that polling data contradicts them or that past experiments with the same type of legislation have failed.  For them, the real goal is restricting firearm ownership in America.

It's disturbing, but not surprising, that Holder's biggest disappointment as attorney general is his failure to further restrict Americans' Constitutionally-guaranteed rights.  As he resigns his post, Holder's contempt for the Second Amendment will likely continue, but at least he will no longer be acting upon that contempt as the country's chief law enforcement officer.