Existing gun control legislation provided the ATF with leverage over FFLs to coerce them into transactions they knew to be criminal. Gun control provided the ATF with the resources and power to organize and conduct the operation. Lastly, gun control was the root cause of the operation itself. The operation was conducted in an effort to create a crisis that would warrant the further restriction of firearms. This restriction would either be that of ownership by law abiding citizens, or that in preventing new purchase by a law abiding citizen.

Barron Barnett
October 22, 2011
Fast and Furious, Root Cause Analysis
[It’s a little bit of a “Catch 22” here. Certainly the existence of gun control enabled the crimes committed by the government agents. But had there not been some laws restricting firearm sales there would have not been a crime for the government agents to commit.

I think the lesson to be learned here is that Ayn Rand was correct. The government has power because it has the power to create criminals.—Joe]

Anti-social violence can be broken down into two categories, Resource crime and Process crime. A resource criminal is willing to kill you to get your stuff. A process criminal is willing to kill you in order to enjoy killing you. They have different motivations. If you give up your wallet to a resource criminal, you’re probably going to be ok. If you mistake a process criminal for a resource criminal and hand over your wallet, you’re still going to get killed because your wallet wasn’t what he was after.

Sean Sorrentino
October 21, 2011
Comment to The Myth of Giving them What They Want. Paraphrasing Facing Violence.
[Pacifists and those that proudly sniff they, “Want to create a society where you don’t need to carry a gun.” have a very narrow view on the wide range of human nature.

The mindsets of both those that would commit violence against us and that of our opponents are so alien that many of us simply cannot believe it is possible. But it is.

There exist, and probably will always exist, people who get pleasure from causing harm.

The only thing which can be done when such a person engages in violence against an innocent life is to do exactly what our anti-gun opponents say should not be done. Violence should begat violence.—Joe]

The sheep see the violence that a sheepdog is capable of on the nightly news in Iraq, Afghanistan, the local police force and in self-defense stories. Similar to the wolf in nature, human sheep can not tell the difference between sheepdogs and wolves from a distance, this scares them. Currently most civilian sheepdogs carry their weapons concealed to blend in with the flock, partly to make wolves question their actions, but honestly one predator can typically spot another. In reality, they try to blend in to avoid spooking the sheep.

Sheepdogs need to work on educating the sheep and helping them understand the risks they face and exposing them to the sheepdogs tools. Helping them understand that gun or a knife is just tool that a person can use for or against evil. Pulling the canines teeth will not make the flock safer from the wolf when the balloon goes up.

Balloon Goes Up
October 20, 2011
Baa, Baa, Woof… What?
[This has been expressed differently by many other people but this is one of the more succinct versions.—Joe]

Just as the DOJ, NIJ/BJS, and the FBI are the hallmarks in research and statistics credibility, there are still politically motivated and tenacious entities like the Brady Campaign to Prevent Handgun Violence (formally Handgun Control, Inc.), the oddly named Violence Policy Center, and Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Handguns that shamelessly cite discredited studies, or simply pull numbers out of thin air while crafting bogus arguments to piously stand in the way of continuing reforms. Gun control in America was a chronic failure. Gun control is dead. It’s time to bury it where it falls and move forward which includes teaching and enabling society to be better prepared and more alert to these sudden mass shootings.

Nanjing03
17 year veteran of law enforcement investigations, administration, and training
October 18, 2011
Comment to Virginia Tech Shooting Survivor Speaking Tonight at Diablo Valley College.
[It’s the burying part that is difficult. Gun control is like a zombie. It slowly stumbles around without any intellectual capacity but it isn’t really dead.—Joe]

It’s probably a lot easier to sleep at night if you think you’re fighting evil corporations, rather than merely being a sour busybody inserting your nose into the personal business of millions and millions of fellow Americans.

Sebastian
October 15, 2011
An Interview with Josh Horwitz
[Horwitz is the Executive Director of Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. Yeah. You would have never heard of him or his organizations if you weren’t active in the gun owner rights movement.

As Sebastian hints at these people either cannot believe and/or want to make others believe that gun ownership is driven by “evil gun companies wanting to make a profit”. That people actual believe that they have a right to own firearms and would want do so without the influence of “corporate interests” is nearly unthinkable to them.—Joe]

For the NRA, it was not supposed to be this way. After the Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment granted a limited right to have a gun in the home, the NRA bragged that it was just the “opening salvo” in a legal war to use the courts to dismantle the nation’s gun laws.

Yet three years, 400 legal challenges, and “millions of dollars in [NRA] legal bills” later, all the gun lobby has had to show for its efforts is a growing body of case law affirming the right of the people to have strong gun laws short of a total handgun ban. Just last week, the same Texas judge who was previously overruled for ruling that domestic abusers have a right to own guns threw out the NRA’s lawsuit claiming that teens have a right to buy semi-automatic handguns. Never before have so many courts so cogently affirmed the constitutionality of so many strong gun laws in such a short span of time.

Dennis Henigan
October 6, 2011
How Many Second Amendment Cases Will the NRA Lose?
[The NRA is mostly a strawman in this context. SAF is who the Brady Campaign should be (and probably is) worried about.

The total number of victories is a poor metric of how the battle is going. More important is how many Supreme Court victories each side has to their credit. In the last three years, how’s that been going for you Dennis?

Gloat while you can Dennis. I’ll be saving these words for your eating pleasure a few years from now.—Joe]