Washington Times:
President
Obama is using his budget to advance an
anti-gun agenda just before the election. One particularly sneaky provision
buried deep within his submission to Congress
Monday would, if enacted, allow the mistakes of the “Fast and Furious”
gun-walking scandal to be repeated.
In
November, the president signed the Justice Department appropriations bill,
which included language from Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican,
prohibiting federal agencies from facilitating the transfer of an operable
firearm to an individual known or suspected to be in a drug cartel, unless they
monitor the weapon at all times.
Now
Mr. Obama is proposing to remove that
provision from the 2013 spending bill, thus making it legal to revive
gun-walking operations in the future. The White House justification is merely that
the prohibition is “not necessary.”
Mr. Cornyn did not buy this explanation. “I
understand the president has ‘complete confidence’ in Attorney General [Eric]
Holder to not carry out further gun-walking operations like Fast and Furious,
but 99 U.S. senators voted otherwise,” he told The Washington Times on
Wednesday, referring to the upper chamber’s unanimous vote in October approving
the amendment.
Even
Democrats wanted to prevent the Justice Department from scheming to have
guns sent over the border to Mexican drug cartels after the botched scheme led
to the death of a border agent. Liberal Sen. Barbara Mikulski surprised many with
her outspoken support for Mr. Cornyn’s amendment. “Fast and Furious
was brought to an end but with terrible problems,” said the Maryland Democrat.
“Hundreds of Mexican citizens have died, our own law enforcement people have
died, and we have to do something about it.”
Rep.
Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform, has been investigating the administration’s role in Fast and Furious.
When asked by The Washington Times about the White House attempt to change policy, the
California Republican replied, “It’s bewildering that anyone would seek to
strip a legal prohibition on federal agents walking guns, considering the
well-known tragic consequences.”
Mr. Obama’s budget contains other
gun-grabbing surprises. The White House is looking to reclaim authority
to destroy surplus M1 Garand rifles and M1 Carbines. For 30 years, the Defense
Department has been blocked from scrapping these collectible firearms that
served our soldiers well in World War II and the Korean War. The administration
also wants to melt down the military’s spent brass casings, thwarting gun
owners who have been buying and recycling the surplus materials.
The
president’s budget would also restore millions in funding to the National
Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control so they can pump out
junk science studies claiming handguns are a public health hazard.
Mr. Obama is becoming more brazen in his
disdain for the Second Amendment as his first term winds down, perhaps in an
attempt to rally his dispirited liberal base headed into November. For those who
believe in the right of the people to keep and bear arms, this ought to serve
as an equally loud wake-up call.
Emily
Miller is a senior editor for the Opinion pages at The Washington Times.
