By Wayne LaPierre, NRA Executive Vice President
If you want a perfect picture of the arrogance, dishonesty and political corruption that make Americans sick when they think of the Obama administration, just look at Attorney General Eric Holder and his outrageous behavior throughout the “Fast and Furious” government gun-smuggling scandal this summer.
That is the sort of abuse of power for the sake of a gun-ban agenda that you’ll face for four more years if President Barack Obama is re-elected.
It is as simple as that.
Let me cut through the fog of Obama’s smokescreen of media misinformation—and give you the bottom line:
The reason that a bipartisan majority of the House voted, for the first time in history, to hold a U.S. attorney general in contempt of Congress—and the reason Obama claimed “executive privilege” to block Congress from investigating his gun-smuggling scheme—is because the White House gun-ban agenda that the NRA has warned you about for years is documented, provable and well under way.
No other explanation is possible, let alone plausible. All the evidence, from the congressional testimony to the documents that have been subpoenaed and surrendered—and for that matter, the motives and actions of those who orchestrated the scheme—all point to a single conclusion:
President Obama has pushed gun control “under the radar”—just as Sarah Brady told The Washington Post that Obama had promised her—so that he can win re-election without gun owners’ opposition, and then wage all-out war on the Second Amendment.
Almost as soon as they took office in 2009, Obama, Holder, Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein and politicians across Washington suddenly began falsely claiming that 90 percent of the guns recovered from crimes in Mexico came from the United States.
When their 90 percent soundbite was exposed as a lie, ATF launched the “Fast and Furious” scheme that transferred thousands of guns from the United States to the most violent criminals in Mexico.
That operation had no plan to track the guns or stop the smugglers at the border, no coordination with Mexican authorities and no intent to arrest the criminals who received the guns. In fact, U.S. officials have no authority whatsoever to make arrests in Mexico.
Think about it: No one attempted to stop the smugglers, seize the guns, identify the criminal networks or arrest anyone. The only purpose was to make the case for gun control—which is just what the Obama administration demanded with its order imposing gun registration on rifle purchasers in four southwestern states.
You know what happens when politicians refuse to enforce laws—or worse yet, break laws—just to demand new laws? Innocent people pay the price. That is why ATF whistleblowers exposed “Fast and Furious” in 2010, asking ATF bosses whether they “were prepared to attend the funeral of a slain agent or officer after he or she was killed with one of those firearms.”
Before the year was out, that grim prediction came true, when U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered with one of those “Fast and Furious” guns. Hundreds of Mexican citizens were also killed with firearms that were smuggled to criminals through that operation; and hundreds of innocent Mexicans and Americans will be killed in the decades to come.
Yet ever since Congress launched its investigation of the operation, Attorney General Holder has stonewalled investigators, evaded their questions, refused to produce thousands of subpoenaed documents, accused his critics of being racist and done everything short of telling congressional investigators to go pound sand. That’s why the 17,000-member National Border Patrol Council has called for his resignation saying, “Credibility, honesty, integrity and honor are trademarks that every law enforcement officer brings to work every day. Yet, as America’s top cop, Mr. Holder has failed on every count.”
It comes as no surprise that a bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives voted to hold Holder in contempt of Congress. What is surprising is that the national media made excuses for Holder, justified Obama’s use of executive privilege and portrayed the entire issue as empty partisan politics. In fact, it’s outrageous.
As lead investigator Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., pointed out in an explosive letter entered into the Congressional Record during the contempt debate in June, senior Justice Department officials clearly knew all about the illegal and deadly operation and could have acted—but didn’t.
Yet when Congress tried to find those responsible, punish the lawbreakers and ensure this tragedy never happens again—Holder stonewalls, Obama calls “time out” and their partisan apologists in the national media largely cheer them on.
That’s a disgrace.
Josephine Terry, the mother of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, recently said, “My son was a person that believed in justice, and he believed in telling the truth. He was a man of his honor.”
If ever you needed one more reason to go “all in” with the NRA in the November 6 elections, let this be it.
Join us to defend your firearms, defend your freedom, demand justice for the Terry family and stand up for the rule of law in America by throwing the lawless out on Election Day.
Together we can—and must—prevail.