Power Grab
In most scandals, one can usually grasp just what the motives behind the wrongdoers was. Tom Clancy once quoted the four motives for political defectors as “MICE” — Money, Ideology, Coercion, and Ego. That applies pretty well to political corruption motives, too. But in this case, nothing seems to make any sense. Many, many pixels have died futile deaths in trying to find out just what the hell the people behind F&F were trying to achieve.
My theory is that it’s purpose was the “under the radar” gun control push. It’s the only thing that makes sense. A couple of years back, the editorial boards of newspapers were ALL MEXICO ALL THE TIME, stating that 90% of guns going to Mexico came from US gun shows or some such. And it was the NRA’s fault. It was, of course, a lie and refuted often. Someone needed it to be an issue to make a gun control push politically viable again.
The anti-gunners and editorial boards (but I repeat myself) couldn’t do it. They’ve been losing on nearly every gun issue for two decades. They needed something, any issue, to score a victory. Like the supposed ‘assault weapons’ issue, they just invented one.
November 17th, 2011 at 10:05 am
Wonder what will happen when the gun culture realizes that members of the gun culture were involved in Fast & Furious?
November 17th, 2011 at 10:11 am
I’ve seen two plausible, non-exclusive motives promoted by (shockingly) the media: arming of one side of the Mexican cartels in order to help them “win” the internecine war down there and return things to normal – i.e., fewer headless corpses, AND the “under the radar” gun control effort. Two birds, one stone.
Seems eminently logical and plausible to me, and something an Alinskyite would have no problem accepting and implementing.
November 17th, 2011 at 10:12 am
Expand there, SB, unless you mean those who were/are exposing it.
November 17th, 2011 at 11:37 am
Yep, also we all know the primary armament for the Cartels came from the Mexican Government (mostly through defecting soldiers) or from the South American Black market.
The number of guns that showed up that traced back to the US is the same number of guns that FBI and BATFE walked across the boarder.
November 17th, 2011 at 11:44 am
“Expand there, SB, unless you mean those who were/are exposing it.”
Sure, no I was wondering about what will happen to the dealers and prominent members of the gun culture that were selling guns in Fast and Furious.
Will they be forgiven, or will they be shunned? Or, will .gov be seen as the driving force behind forcing these people to sell. I guess time will tell.
November 17th, 2011 at 1:18 pm
From the reports I have seen, the ‘prominent members of the gun culture that were selling guns in Fast and Furious’, were all dealers who did so under protest and due to coercion from the ATF. Does Shootin’ Buddy have an example of something else?
November 17th, 2011 at 2:01 pm
At least some of those dealers demanded and got written requests for cooperation with F&F, signed and on ATF letterhead. They knew straw purchases are illegal, and weren’t about to hang themselves out on the line without an ATF paper trail.
November 17th, 2011 at 2:26 pm
There was no money in it. No coercion — the cartels didn’t leverage them into it. There was no ego to it — they didn’t get big busts.
That only leaves ideology.
November 17th, 2011 at 4:41 pm
A comment from that rat ba—–d Holder during his “interview” in congress was that If we had stronger gun control laws, the ATF would not have to do things like gunwalker.
Seems pretty clear to me that all the progressives wanted was to twist facts and promote more onerous firearms laws. (Punishing the innocent of course.)
Agreed; Ideology, disarm the citizens so the progressives can have their way.
November 17th, 2011 at 5:22 pm
There’s always money involved too. Being as F&F was also part of the WAD, and that there is a LOT of money involved in the WAD, you can be sure that money played a role.
And you can never leave out ego. The mere thrill of pulling off something so deliciously evil is the kind of thing that attracts a lot of people.
My hope is that this scandal will get more people to wake up to the fact that F&F style politics is all around us, and has been for a long time. Your local dog catcher probably has something similar going on– it just may not involve guns at all. See? “Never let a crisis go to waste” is actually, “Never let the opportunity to create a crisis go to waste.” Global Warming is an example of an “F&F”. Fanny and Freddie, the bi-weekly food scare— the list is long.
November 17th, 2011 at 6:39 pm
I remind everyone I can that this operation was meant to warp public opinion toward stronger firearms regulation. This was an artifically constructed crisis designed to deprive us of our 2nd Amendment rights by an out-of-control Federal government.
Governments would rather deal with unarmed peasants.
November 17th, 2011 at 8:04 pm
The only reason I can think of is that they wanted proof of where guns went after they crossed the Mexican border.
Like injecting UV die in liquid or smoke into air… to show where the leaks are.
The fact that they had no one informed on the other side to tell them exactly where the guns surfaced seems to me to be either a very poorly thought out plan* or it was to add detail to the reason why gun laws could be made more strict.
* The ATF’s F&F plan:
1. record serial numbers
2. approve straw purchases and other illegal sales
3. ?
4. Arrests
November 17th, 2011 at 11:28 pm
If they did not invent this as psychological warfare against the Second Amendment from the inception, they certainly ran with it for that purpose. I’ll never forget Hillary and Vincente Fox on TV together, clamoring for American gun control. The US Secretary of State, collaborating with the head of a foreign government to disarm Americans: traitor.