Democratic lawmakers contend that Operation Fast and Furious exemplifies the need to strengthen U.S. gun laws to give federal law enforcement officials more tools to prosecute criminal weapon traffickers.
“This hunt for blame doesn’t really speak about the problem,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein at a recent Senate Judiciary hearing while discussing Fast and Furious.
“And the problem is, anybody can walk in and buy anything, .50-caliber weapons, sniper weapons, buy them in large amounts, and send them down to Mexico. So, the question really becomes, what do we do about this?”
The ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) have introduced a dedicated firearms trafficking statute, but it has stalled in the House Judiciary Committee.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, which has taken the lead investigating Fast and Furious, say that discussing gun laws and the botched operation are very different.
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who worked as a federal prosecutor for six years, pointed to the federal sentencing guidelines for possession of illegal automatic machine guns, saying that the second illegal machine gun guarantees life in prison.
“When I hear people trying to make this a political conversation about the need to reform federal gun laws, what do you want other than life?” said Gowdy in an interview with The Hill. “I get it, I’d want to change the subject too if I were them. I’m happy to have a conversation about broader gun laws, but we’re going to do it after Fast and Furious.”
The 'problem', Senator isn't our current gun laws - it's that our Department of Justice happily allowed straw buyers to purchase weapons and traffic them across the border, something very much already against existing US law. The problem is that you, as a sitting Senator are actually defending this for partisan political purposes.
Of course Senator Feinstein hails from the Leftist asylum of California.
This latest push from the Democrats makes accusations that Fast and Furious was engineered by the Obama Administration to 'prove' the need for harsher restrictions on Second Amendment rights a lot more believable. And it shows that the Democrats are quite willing to try to shield Attorney General Eric Holder from his lies, mismanagement and incompetency in the matter.
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