[BillCA]

maestro pistolero - neutered is a good term for it. I just wanted to make the distinction between limiting ATF's authority and spreading it's duties to other agencies...which could end up almost as bad (few things could be worse than ATF, IMO).

Originally Posted by GoOfY-FoOt

Can you confirm this with a date in conjunction to possibly a video? I would love to be able to infer from the timing, location and body language, etc...what he meant by that comment.

Confirmation is just a step away. The source is a Washington Post article that quotes Sarah Brady about her March 30 visit to the White House. She quotes Obama as saying that gun control is very much on his agenda and that the administraton was "working on a few things under the radar." The article was a fluff-piece for Obama's regulatory whiz-kid, Steve Croley and this was just an "innocent" paragraph towards the end.

See the WaPo article here

In Re: 90% statistic.
The original stat was shot down quickly by public commentators (including thousands of bloggers). That was March of 2009. Not too surprisingly, the origins of "Fast and Furious" can be traced to approximately this same timeframe. Coincidence? (old adage: There are no coincidences in Washington).

Truth: Back then, the seized gun count was just under 30,000 (call it 29,000 and some change). Publicly, the ATF said that "6,000" guns were submitted for tracing and about 5,400 were "sourced" to the USA. Sure, this is not rocket science. Mexico sorted the guns stamped "MADE IN USA" and those with U.S. import markings into a separate pile and asked ATF to trace them. This resulted in "90% of the submitted guns being traced to the USA". Duh!

What was more interesting (and I can't find the source) was that a significant portion of those traced guns (about 40% IIRC) were traced to two U.S. "foreign aid" programs. One is the military assistance program where we supply guns to Mexico's military. The other is called the "commercial sales" program, where commerical guns are sold to "authorized" Mexican businesses -- armored car companies, security companies, power and pharmacuetical companies,etc. The bottom line was that only about 7% came from border gun shops.

This is just like the focus Congress had on Assault Weapons. Instead of focusing on the significant problem, let's spend our resources on 2% of the problem. Here everyone is talking border gunshops that are the source in only 7% of the cases. Yeah, that's being really effective.

Honestly, part of me wonders if the whole "crime guns in Mexico" issue isn't just a ruse anyway. It seems to me that the root of the problem is discontent over the drug trafficing and other crime coming across the border from Mexico. The Mexican government certainly doesn't seem overly inclined to do anything about it and a good number of politicians in the U.S. aren't either. I can't help but wonder if, with gun control being so politically unpopular in the last 10-15 years, it's just a convenient issue to distract the public from the real problem. No one will have to actually do anything besides blame someone else since new gun control legislation has about the same chance as a snowball in Hades of passing.

It could also be that U.S. authorities are letting the situation escalate while flailing about just enough to contain it until the citizenry starts clamoring for them to "do something" about it.

Of course, such clamoring will start just before the next election and I would not be surprised to see Brady/VPC/Bloomberg priming the pump with articles and editorials in the border state newspapers. I know that's cynical of me...