The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, or the ATF, has a special place at the top of the Right Wing and the NRA hate list. Presumably working through the GOP/Teabully Government shutdown without pay, heroic ATF agents arrested two alleged White Supremacists in Tucson, Arizona, confiscating a cache of weapons and ammunition stockpiled by convicted felons, Kirby Kehoe and his son, Cheyne Kehoe.
The Kehoes have previously been implicated as the suppliers of weaponry to White Supremacist groups who used them to commit robberies in the midwest.? The family has also been linked to a plot to overthrow the United States Government and to,??establish the Aryan Peoples Republic in the Pacific Northwest.?
Examination of statistics on hate groups in the United States show that their numbers have dramatically increased since the election of President Barack Obama.? The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks these groups and posts an online map to show the growth.
It is true that hate groups are active in large, Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern States, as well as in California. But there are large and growing numbers of these groups active in states like Arizona and Texas, as well as in the more Southern and old time Confederate States. Hate groups are steadily increasing?from Virginia to Florida, and from Missouri to Oklahoma,?and Mississippi.
Here is where the Right Wing, aided by the GOP and the NRA, has operated to allow these hate groups, many of which are White Supremacists, to proliferate and to arm themselves for the revolution that they see coming.
The ATF is the? arm of the Federal Government charged with policing violations of Federal firearm laws.? Unfortunately,? the position of Director of the ATF has been vacant since 2006; when Congress changed the law? so as to require the director of the ATF to be confirmed by the Senate. President Obama’s nominee to fill the vacancy has been stalled in the Senate, leaving the ATF without a permanent Director.
Congress has further hampered the ATF in its duties to enforce Federal Firearm Laws by refusing to allow it to move into the modern age, with the creation of an online database so as to allow agents to trace the movements of guns used during the commission of crimes.? This forces agents to make telephone calls to gun makers and sellers and enlist their cooperation in tracing the history of a gun.? And who is responsible for this legal loophole that serves to benefit criminals?
The NRA,?which falsely claims that a national registry would eventually be used to confiscate legal guns in the hands of law abiding citizens otherwise known as the ?good guys with a gun?.? The NRA successfully lobbied Congress taking out appropriations? that would have been dedicated to creating the Federal database.? And the FBI is legally obligated to destroy background check information within 24 hours, meaning there is one day for the FBI to determine if an intended purchaser is legally entitled to a weapon.
The Right Wing and the NRA have made political hay associating the Obama Administration with the ?Fast And Furious Program,? an ATF program operated out the Phoenix, Arizona ATF Office, intended to allow buyers of large numbers of high powered weapons, such as AK-47s, to make the purchases, then provide the names of the buyers with the serial numbers of the weapons purchased, to the ATF.? But no one in the ATF or in the Department of Justice has ever publicly acknowledged responsibility.
It is also a fact the same ATF agent, Bill Newell, who supervised similar operations, beginning in 2006 under the Bush Administration, also supervised ?Fast And Furious? when it was restarted in the early days of the Obama Administration, in the fall of 2009.
Special Agent Newell has stated that;
? There is no evidence that Holder or any other high ranking Justice Department official knew the ins and outs of the operation?.
There is a correlation between States with the least restrictions and regulations on guns , and states with both a higher percentage of gun violence, and guns concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people.? States with the weakest gun laws have the most gun violence, and the deeply red Southern States, Arizona too, are all at the top of the list.
So take a bow NRA and all of the rest of the ATF Government hating crowd out there.? Your influence over Congress has helped to arm the White Supremacist groups, who are arming themselves to the teeth, while planning armed revolution. They are, at the same time, hamstringing Federal authorities going about the daily business of trying to keep guns out of the hands of convicted felons and the mentally disturbed.
Now,?despite the shutdown, the ATF are still working, and?are doing so without a paycheck.
Edited by SS
