The Razor

There hadn’t been anything like it since 9-11. Hundreds of Americans die in a spasm of violence by terrorists wielding grenades, C4 explosives and RPG launchers – explosives that aren’t legally available in the United States and are impossible to acquire even under the counter no matter what the price. Over the course of the investigation by American authorities it is discovered that the government of Mexico has shipped thousands of military-grade weapons to al Qaeda, and that al Qaeda did what it promised to do: fill American streets with the blood of infidels.

When presented with the evidence, the Mexican authorities claim it was part of an operation to track stolen military weaponry from the Mexican army to Islamic terrorists. The American government was never notified of the sting operation until the story broke by a Mexican blogger and pictures of dead Americans filled TV screens. As the story is uncovered, Mexican authorities repeatedly lie to American investigators only to be undermined by emails and testimony by whistleblowers. Mexican President Filipe Calderón refuses to discuss the operation, code named Operación Rápido y Furioso, leaving all questions to his attorney general Marisela Morales. Morales claims that the operation was necessary to stem the flow of arms from deserters in the Mexican army to al Qaeda operatives in the United States. Yet when pressed for specifics on how the tracking was supposed to occur within the United States when the US government was never engaged, Morales blames mistakes made at the lower levels of the Federal Public Ministry (Ministerio Público de la Federación).

Perhaps the scenario described above can give you an idea how Mexicans feel about Attorney General Eric Holder’s bungled Operation Fast and Furious. While Americans focus on the death of border agent Brian Terry and the raison d’être of the operation, namely the desire for the Obama administration to enact stricter gun control laws, little has been said about the hundreds of Mexican citizens – many of them innocent bystanders – killed by the weapons the Federal government supplied to the Mexican drug cartels.

Since 2006 when President Calderón declared war on the drug cartels operating in his country, The Guardian claims anywhere between 35,000 and 60,000 have been killed in the violence. At least 5000 are missing and presumed dead. For perspective even the conservative figure of 35,000 is triple the number of Americans killed on 9-11, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the United States is roughly 2 1/2 times the size of Mexico, that conservative figure comparatively becomes 100,000 – more than all Americans killed in wars and terrorist acts since the end of World War 2. These are horrific numbers, yet Eric Holder’s Justice Department and the ATF eagerly meddled in Mexico’s internal war, putting at risk and sacrificing thousands of Mexicans for domestic political reasons. If ever the Mexican government had a completely justifiable reason to go to war with the United States, Operation Fast and Furious is it.

Attorney General Eric Holder doesn’t see things this way of course. He has called the investigation by Congress a “witch hunt,” comparing the hearings to the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950’s. After that comparison failed to undermine the efforts to expose the scandal he has resorted to claiming he and President Barack Obama are victims of racism.

Samuel Johnson once quipped that “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” If Johnson were alive today it is easy to imagine him as amending his aphorism, substituting “racism” for patriotism. Has Holder reached the end of the defense of Operation Fast and Furious that he has nothing left to play except for the race card? Does he seriously believe that people would accept his explanation and justification for the botched operation if only his skin color was different?

If what Eric Holder says is true, that those of us attacking his handling of Fast and Furious are only doing so because we don’t like black people in power, then we conservatives and Republicans must not have any problems with white people in power – namely House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Vice President Joe Biden, DNC Chairwoman Debra Wasserman-Schultz, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner. In addition we would not support black people in power like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Congressman Allen West, former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and former presidential contender Herman Cain.

Bigotry is consistent. If you hate people because of their skin color, then you are going to hate them regardless of their ideology or ideas. For a racist skin color trumps everything else. If you hate black people, you are going to hate Clarence Thomas as much as Martin Luther King jr. If you are going to call someone a racist and they aren’t consistent, then you are either wrong, a scoundrel or both.

Attorney General Eric Holder is both. Holder has crossed the line by playing the race card, and being the politician he is he must know it. Such an act can only be one of desperation at a time when the sole African-American on the Supreme Court is lionized by conservatives and until recently the leading contender for the GOP presidential nomination was a black man. Holder has shown a complete lack of decency by tarring those challenging his inept handling of the Justice Department as racist. It is the final insult and the act of a desperate man.

Attorney General Eric Holder should resign immediately. Congress should begin drawing up articles of impeachment against Holder. He has squandered what power the office he holds grants him by using it to undermine the US Constitution, supply arms to enemies of a friendly state thereby providing it with a legitimate casus belli to go to war with the United States, and playing the race card against those who dare question his actions.

Luckily for us the Mexican government sees no advantage for attacking the United States to punish us for Holder’s arming of the drug cartels, but that is little comfort to the thousands of family members of those killed by weapons supplied to the drug cartels by our government. It is also no comfort to the family of border patrol agent Brian Terry. Holder’s resignation or impeachment will not bring their loved ones back to life, but these actions will show that the United States will not tolerate illegal activities by the those occupying the highest levels of its government no matter what their skin color or party affiliation.

Some of the responses I have seen to Operation Fast and Furious attempt to portray those who support the right to bear arms as being paranoid about the government’s sending guns to the Mexican drug cartels. CBS News has documents proving that the ATF used the secret government program to justify ATF demands for laws covering multiple gun sales.

This is the rough equivalent of burglarizing houses in a neighborhood to boost burglar alarm system sales.

We aren’t being paranoid. The federal government sent arms to the drug cartels to undermine a right explicitly set in the Constitution.

Somebody needs to be fired – and then jailed. This is the United States not Russia.

UPDATE: John Hinderaker from Powerline weighs in with the ultimate question to President Obama:

(W)hy in the world did the Obama administration not just allow AK-47s and other weapons to be shipped across the border to Mexican drug gangs, but encourage and even finance such transactions, over the objections of jittery gun shop owners and its own veteran agents? If the Obama administration wasn’t trying to set up an argument for more gun control, then what was it trying to do? That question has never been answered.

As I have said before, as a kid I watched the Watergate hearings after school instead of cartoons. Later in college I watched the Iran-Contra hearings instead of getting drunk with my friends. Now I’m watching the Fast and Furious hearings and without a doubt, Fast and Furious stands out as the worst scandal of the three. Why? Because no one died from Watergate.

There has never been much love for the ATF among conservatives. Terms like “Ruby Ridge” and “Waco” might not elicit more than shrugs from most people, but to those on the right-most fringes they are the equivalent of Pearl Harbor and the Alamo, exemplifying a government run amok stealing freedom from its citizens. The smoldering hatred of the ATF goes back much further into the mists of Appalachian mountains where bootleggers made moonshine and played cat and mouse games with the federal authorities determined to shut them down. Add in a conservative’s instinctive distrust of all things associated with the federal government, a topic involving guns and what was once at the fringes of the Right becomes increasingly mainstream.

Operation Fast and Furious is just the latest example of the outright stupidity of the ATF. The details of the operation are so simple that it’s difficult to understand how it ever left the whiteboard let alone was approved. Straw purchases of guns from legal gun dealers were encouraged, and existing gun laws intentional bypassed to allow guns to be tracked from gun dealers to the border. But there the tracking stopped; the next time the guns were seen again was at crime scenes in Mexico.

Members of both parties are questioning the purpose of this operation. If it was to track the guns to the Mexican drug cartels, how were the guns supposed to be tracked after they hit the border? And even if there was some way of tracking them once they moved into Mexico, why? We know where the Mexican drug cartels are; they have taken over entire states and operate openly in cities throughout the country. So what was the reason for the operation?

Lacking an answer to that question that doesn’t sound like it was made by bureaucrats stoned out of their gourds makes conservatives search for other motives. The Obama administration has been pushing the lie that 90% of weapons recovered at crime scenes in Mexico originated in the US. This myth has been perpetrated by Obama as well as Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder and Mexican president Felipe Calderón and amplified by anti-gun members of Congress and the mainstream media.

One doesn’t have to be a paranoid, black helicopter-fearing wing nut to wonder whether the true purpose of Fast and Furious was to flood Mexico with firearms from the United States in order to create a backlash against legitimate gun dealers and owners. At this point it is the only logical conclusion that fits the data. Even Hanlon’s Razor can’t even save it. Fast and Furious makes sense in this context.

First consider that the operation remained secret – though we only know about the operation because of a single whistleblower. Next imagine the US government passing serial numbers of the guns to Mexican law enforcement, who would then announce their presence at crime scenes. Guns from the United States would then become the story, allowing the administration to put forward “sensible and sane restrictions on guns” that only the most rabid gun-nut would oppose, say making the California ban on assault weapons a federal one. Sure a small number of gun dealers would complain that the government had forced them to break the law, but most would remain silent, fearing retaliation by the federal government.

Almost 10 years ago I founded this journal to combat the conspiracy theories and plain muddy thinking that came from the Left after 9-11. Since that time I have come to learn that conspiracists exist across the political spectrum, but have no trouble applying the same rules of logic to the Kennedy Assassination as I do to the 9-11 Truthers. Just because I share many of the same goals of the Right such as limited government does not mean that I believe in some overarching Right Wing creed that includes the belief that the Federal Government is inherently evil and out to destroy the freedoms set forth in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the Constitution. “Limited” does not mean “none.” The Founders of this Republic may have disagreed with the extent of the federal government, but they all agreed to its existence.

But given what I know today about Fast and Furious, it is easy for me to understand why some people grab their guns and head to the hills. The fact that an agency of the federal government would come up with Fast and Furious and then fail to explain its purpose before elected representatives of the people in Congress makes me a little more sympathetic to those who believe the conspiracies that I have spent years deconstructing. That doesn’t mean that I accept that the CIA planted explosives in the World Trade Center or that its assassins assisted Oswald in killing Kennedy, but Fast and Furious and the people that spawned it have created a nurturing environment for such conspiracies to flourish. Add in the strange handling of Bin Laden’s assassination and burial at sea, and the Obama administration seems almost to be encouraging people to believe in anti-government conspiracies.

The question remains: Is Fast and Furious itself a conspiracy? So far it’s hard to argue otherwise after the head of the ATF sat before elected representatives of the People and could not justify the operation. His resignation will not end the speculation that its purpose was nothing less than the undermining of the 2nd Amendment using the corpses of Mexican civilians.

Update: Here’s a complete timeline of the scandal.
SayUncle writes: “Imagine the DEA telling pharmacists to illegally sell oxycontin to known drug dealers or they would be shut down. Then imagine the DEA using the fact that more oxycontin was on the street (and hundreds of overdose deaths) as a pretext for making it harder for patients to get prescribed narcotics. This is essentially what happened with the ATF and Project Gunwalker.”

Update: Seems we crazy gun nuts weren’t being paranoid after all. Operation Fast and Furious: Designed to Promote Gun Control:

Can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same FfL and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks Mark R. Chait Assistant Director Field Operations.”

Update:

The most impressive revelations are of data that Acting Director Melson gave them. ATF was ready to cooperate until it was gagged by the Deputy Attorney General. They informed the Deputy AG that they had documents that contradicted the “official story” Justice was giving out. A memo describing an important meeting—held to convince a cooperating gun dealer who was getting worried about allowing all these suspicious gun buys—was actually written over a year later, after the controversy broke. Melson says there is a memo that is a “smoking gun,” which Justice is still refusing to reveal to the Committee.

UPDATE: Investors Business Daily opines:

Now the FBI may have been coerced into being an accessory. “It is unconscionable and goes beyond just being a terribly ill-conceived investigation to bordering, if not crossing, into criminal activity,” says Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., a former federal prosecutor and member of Issa’s committee.

The lies, the intimidation of witnesses, the administration denials — all are part of a cover-up strongly reminiscent of Watergate except for one thing: Nobody died at Watergate.

Ouch!

I bought my first firearm tonight – a .22 Marlin rifle with Bushnell scope. It isn’t as sexy as the Cx4 Storm or the Colt LE6920 M-4 on the shelf, but it’s a start.

My Targetmaster membership expired in January so I haven’t been to the range since then. That doesn’t mean that I have completely given up on firearms; quite the contrary, I’m planning my first purchase.

After all the guns I shot last year only a few really stood out. These were enjoyable to shoot, easy to handle and represent some of the finest firearms available today. Here are my favorites.

In the category of best handgun, the winner is…

The Beretta U22 Neo. This is one of the first guns we shot, and it was the one we always switched to when the Kid and I just wanted to relax and have fun after firing a bigger caliber. I still hate the design but I am a function over form kind of guy, and this gun simply never disappointed. It’s extremely accurate, doesn’t weigh alot or take your arm off when it fires.

In the category of best carbine, the winner is…

Looks like the Italians are going to sweep this year because the Cx4 Storm. The Cx4 Storm surprised me in many ways. The composites keep the gun light but still manage to feel natural. I was at first put off by the kick, but after several firings I found that it was a natural force that a good stance easily compensated for.

One of the biggest shortcomings with the membership at Targetmaster was the fact that it is an indoor range limited to 25 yards. I really want to explore shooting at longer distances using scoped rifles. Plus the Kid never got comfortable with the automatic fire.

I finally picked up the Big Bang Pack at Restricted Knowledge after seeing the Exploding Targets episode of Wreckreation Nation (which showed a sniper school tonight – making a perfect combo if you ask me). I love esoteric knowledge; there’s something cool about learning how to make thermite. I suppose I’ll never have the chance to destroy a T-800 series but you never know.

And the Napalm how-to could come in handy during the Zombie Apocalypse.

I am a kid at heart – so when I watched Wreckreation Nation on the Discovery Channel and saw people shooting everyday objects with high-powered rifles and making them explode, the years peeled away. Of course I didn’t have a wife when I was a kid but she didn’t seem surprised when I told her that I had found a new hobby once we move. She didn’t even seem to mind.

I am not the only one who has been bitten by this unique bug. YouTube is full of videos of people blowing up stuff with guns. For example here’s a guy who blew up his Macintosh. It reminds me of this scene from Office Space.

Source: Josh Smith

Just imagine what those boys could have done with a few pounds of tannerite and an AK-47. BTW this movie has gradually become one of my all-time favorites, and this scene in particular stands out. I’ve been using PCs for 20 years and I still run into printer problems. My current fave at the office: people who send legal jobs to printers that don’t have legal loaded – and the printer is too dumb to skip those jobs and allow letter-sized jobs pass. That raw hatred they have for their printer? Yeah, I feel it. But I digress.

There are several cool things about the explosive (tannerite) used in the hobby of explosive target shooting.First, the explosive used is completely legal. I’m simply too old to do dumb illegal stuff anymore. I’ll leave that to the Kid. Second the explosive is a mixture of two common inert ingredients that once mixed must be hit by a high velocity round traveling at least 2,000 fps. You can even bang the stuff with a hammer or light it on fire and it won’t explode. That’s a plus because I like being old and would prefer to get even older. I’m way too fat and old to have lived fast, died young and left a good looking corpse. Third the stuff is cheap. Target shooting is already expensive enough so the last thing I need is to make it even more expensive. Finally it gives me an excuse to get an assault rifle. I like the looks of the AK, but I like the feel of the AR-15 much better.

Two guns.

Police yesterday seized a small cache of weapons and ammo from the Totowa, NJ, home of troubled Giants star Plaxico Burress... Seized in the raid were one 9 mm handgun, a rifle and ammo for three additional guns – a .380, a .45 and a .40

Gotta love that MSM…

With the Kid at school and a mandatory holiday from work I headed down to the range for a little “me time.” We’ve had our eyes on the Smith and Wesson 1911 .45 for awhile now, but since the experience with the .40 I wanted to try it out alone before I handed it over to the Kid.

This was my first time firing a large bore handgun, and the 1911 did not disappoint.  The gun felt substantial without being heavy and honestly kicked about as much as some of the smaller calibers I’ve fired. At 10 yards out after my first shot hit at the 8 mark, I hit 9 nine marks and the remaining 40 falling into the red 10+. The groupings were very narrow left-right, leading me to believe that had I focused more on my breathing I would have shot even better. This was some of the best shooting I’ve done with any handgun, and the accuracy of such a large bore weapon surprised me. The trigger was smooth without being squishy, giving me that bit of surprise when I was on target and triggering the round.

On the negative I did have a few jams ejecting the rounds and reloading. I attribute these to my modified weaver stance with married thumbs – or rather my failure to execute the stance properly. My right arm was slightly bent at the elbow so that when the round fired, my arm took some of the force that should have gone into moving the slide. Towards the end of the session I did manage to keep my arm solid in the stance without causing too much shake, but I think it would be much easier to fire the gun with a classic stance. Stronger arms would no doubt have helped too.

After finishing a box of 50 I switched to .22 do to price ($20 vs 100 rounds of .22 for $7) – but reluctantly. Even with the power of the .45 I probably could have shot another box without tiring.

Overall I’m very impressed with this weapon. For stopping power and accuracy this gun will serve you well.

A better review of the gun can be found at Gunblast.

This review is three weeks old. I don’t have much to say about the gun so I’ll just post it as is.

I’m starting to learn a basic fact about guns: the smaller the gun the bigger the kick. Tonight we fired the Hechler & Koch P2000sk.

The P2000sk is a small 9mm but feels like a tempest in your hand. Overall I wasn’t thrilled with this gun. I prefer accuracy at a distance, and this thing just bounces around in your hand alot while firing it. My feeling is that if you want stopping power at close range, why would you be firing a 9mm?

So far my experience with the HK line isn’t as good as mine with the Beretta line. Maybe I’m just a big wussie and HKs are just too manly for me – or maybe HKs have their uses and I haven’t found what they are just yet in my brief 8 months of target shooting experience. Or maybe they are simply overrated. I don’t know, but if I needed a pocket gun for protection, I sure as heck wouldn’t want a P2000sk in 9mm. .40 maybe and .45 – definitely – but not 9mm.

Sometimes at the range I begin to wish that ammunition wasn’t so expensive because I want to stay and shoot for hours. Friday night was one of those nights when the Kid & I tried out the Springfield XD40. The Kid wanted to see what a bigger gun felt like, and one of the guys at the range recommended the XD40.

The gun is one of Springfield’s polymer pistol line and fires a .40 round.  I’m still trying to learn the differences between cartridges, calibers, and guns – which isn’t easy given the diversity of firearms at our disposal here in the USA. But had I not known that I was firing a bigger cartridge, I wouldn’t have known that I wasn’t firing a 9mm.

As Jack Knight notes in his excellent review of this weapon, the gun competes with Glock and fires much like a Glock. I liked this gun and felt that I could have shot it for at least an hour or two. Although firing a bigger round using a larger cartridge, I found this weapon kicked less than some of the 9’s we’ve shot. In fact neither the Kid nor I had much trouble keeping it under control while firing several consecutive rounds – and that says alot considering the trouble the Kid has had firing some of the 9’s. The mechanism was tight; the Kid had trouble pulling the slide back and loading the initial round; but I actually felt that it was appropriate. The gun has a drop safety which wasn’t a problem, and given the tight trigger wasn’t really needed in my opinion.

Overall this step up was a winner. If it wasn’t for the cost of rounds – 50% more than 9mm – this gun would become of our faves. But at $18 for 50 rounds, it’s easy to break the budget quickly firing this gun. For those wanting a more powerful weapon than a 9mm but are concerned about control, this gun is for you.

Congratulations to his week’s winner:
Non-Council: Bishop Hill, Is Gun Control Behind Our Loss of Civil Liberties?

And a special thank you to the Council for awarding my post the title for this week’s council posts,

American Whining and the Culture of Dependence. Full voting results are here.

It is an honor and I humbly appreciate it.

After researching everyone’s favorite 9mm, I found that the Browning Hi-Power appeared on quite a few lists. So when the Kid and I got bored this afternoon we hit the range to fire it.

The Browning Hi-Power is single action with a magazine that can hold up to 18 rounds. The extra capacity is a nice touch since I find reloading to be a pain. The gun feels old; it’s all metal with no composite or plastic materials that I could find. It’s not especially heavy and I found the gun to be well balanced in the hand. The trigger was tight and the mechanism smooth; I especially liked the slide release above the trigger on the left side although I tend to pull the slide all the way back to load the first round.

We fired Remington Golden Saber 9mm Luger ammo today, so we had a clear comparison with the SIG P239 – although after a few rounds there really wasn’t any comparison. The Browning Hi-Power was easy to control with not much of a kick for a 9mm. In fact I would say that it’s one of the least kicking 9’s I’ve fired – if not the least (the Kid seems to think that one of the Beretta 9 mm’s we fired early on in our “gun journey” was better – so we’ll test that the next time out).

The Kid still shot a little low; he’s clearly over compensating controlling the gun, but he’s young yet. I’m beginning to think that .22’s are more his speed right now. I found the Browning’s sights to be easy, and I fired relatively tight groups quickly and smoothly at 10 yards. The kick was completely controllable and I had no trouble resuming my aim. In fact I found it too easy – and we burned through $12 worth of ammo extremely quickly due to the larger magazine.

This is an Old School classic. It’s 1922 technology that works much better than most of the the more recent designs we’ve fired so far in 9mm.  It’s the best 9mm I’ve fired so far, but I will check the Beretta that the Kid mentioned in a future post.

First thing after work as promised the Kid and I hit the range. We started with a box of .22 and the trusty old Anschutz rifle. After warming up with that we moved to shooting a 9mm, the SIG P239.

Because the range was out of the cheap stuff they sold us Remington Golden Saber 9mm Luger ammo at the same price. I mention this because being a newbie I don’t know what the difference is between brands and types of ammunition.

I loaded up 8 into the tight magazine for the Kid and shadowed him (something I always do until he realizes how a gun reacts) until he pulled the trigger. For an instant I thought I had gotten the wrong caliber. He held it tightly but the gun obviously gave him a ride. He finished the magazine and the grip was sweaty from his 12 year old hands controlling the gun.

What can I say? I swear the SIG P239 felt like I was firing something much bigger than the “usual” 9mm’s we shoot. However the biggest problem, and the one that was a deal-breaker for me recommending it, was the trigger. The trigger was just too soft. I’m beginning to learn that guns are like cars, food, or anything else that has a seemingly endless variety. The kick would have been much more manageable had the trigger been tighter.

After 50 rounds the target confirmed this. At 15 yards most of my shots had been centered L-R but were about 6” lower than my aim. This confirmed the feeling I had while shooting that I was overcompensating for the kick by forcing the barrel lower as I squeezed the trigger. With a tighter trigger I’m pretty sure it would have shot similarly to the Px4 Storm, but the “feel” of the storm in the hand is better than the SIG P239.

How big a role did the ammo play in the “kick” of this gun? I don’t know. I doubt I will be firing it again any time soon.

On a sidenote, two lawyers were at the range celebrating the Heller decision firing their own .40’s and .45’s. Everyone there tonight was pretty stoked about the ruling, but were also a bit annoyed by the close vote.

After a 5-4 decision… One vote would have kept me from protecting myself and my family – or risk becoming a criminal myself. One lousy vote…

I’m relieved – but more than a little concerned that given the opportunity 4 Supreme Court justices were willing to gut the Second Amendment.

More at Dean’s World.