From Gunrunner to Gun-Grabber

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-MD, wants to grab your guns.

On June 30th, Maryland Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings assembled gun confiscation advocates and Second Amendment foes from across the nation to approach the Project Gunrunner/Fast and Furious debacle by doing what the Left does best: changing the subject.

As it is not in the nature of liberals to allow truth to interfere with their agenda, the Congressman decided to ignore the fact that members of the Obama regime’s ATF had directed the sale of thousands of weapons to drug cartel straw buyers and assisted in trafficking those guns across the Mexican border.

Instead, Cummings claimed that “no legitimate examination of [drug cartel violence and illegal firearms trafficking] will be complete without analyzing our nation’s gun laws, which allow tens of thousands of assault weapons to flood into Mexico from the United States each year.”

It apparently escaped the Congressman’s notice that it was President Obama’s ATF and DOJ that fractured those gun laws and caused a flood of weapons across the border in the first place.

So, with the embarrassing facts of Project Gunrunner properly shoved under the table, the Cummings Forum offered the following recommendations to halt the flow of arms across the border:

• Increase the penalties for illegal straw purchases;
• Enact a dedicated firearms trafficking statute;
• Implement a multiple long gun sales reporting requirement.The unabridged Federal Guide to Gun Laws is 400 pages long. Everything illegal about gun manufacture, import, purchase, use, ownership or sale is already “on the books.”

  For example, lying on the federal form required to purchase a weapon carries a penalty of “not more than 5 years” in prison. A straw purchaser can be sentenced to 5 years for EVERY gun he purchases and then delivers to someone else for their use. (3)

  Smuggling or trafficking a weapon into Mexico carries a maximum $250,000 fine and prison term of up to ten years. Again, this is for each charge.

  Therefore, firearm smugglers, traffickers, and straw purchasers are already dealt with under federal statute. But rather than hold the Obama regime responsible for its deadly, criminal scheme to undermine the right of the American people to keep and bear arms, Cummings chose to put the blame for Gunrunner’s illegal sales on a fictitious lack of adequate legislation.

  What of the long gun reporting requirement? Mandatory firearms registration has been a dream of the Left for decades. And even though Gunrunner has already been exposed as a scheme to manufacture a necessity for more restrictive gun control legislation, liberals like Cummings continue their march toward the national registration–and eventual confiscation–of all firearms owned by the American people.

  The New York Times placed blame for Gunrunner/Fast and Furious on the passion of American gun owners for their weapons. The Washington Post decided Fast and Furious might not have happened if the ATF “had other, more effective tools at its disposal.” And the L.A Times lamented the “impossible mission” of the ATF, given the perpetual grievances of the “gun lobby.”

  Liberal sycophants like liberal Democrat Elijah Cummings seek to absolve the Obama administration of blame for the Gunrunner debacle. It looks as though he’ll always have plenty of help from his left-wing cheering squads.

  To contact your Congressional Representative use this link: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

  To read more use these links:

  http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/investigative/documents/firearms_report_063011.pdf

  http://www.gunlaws.com/faq.htm#howmany

  http://web.ncf.ca/fl512/government/gun_trafficking_and_the_southwest_border4.html

  This article originally appeared on CoachIsRight.com and is reprinted with permission.