Quote:
Originally Posted by Evil Tim
It's kinda funny that the majority of the anti-gun rhetoric in there has absolutely nothing to do with the operation. Policing the border means stopping weapons from being moved illegally, not stopping Americans buying guns and owning them legally. You might as well say that people-trafficking means we should try to reduce the populations of countries the people are smuggled from and make it harder for them to have kids.
It's also full of the usual idiot alarmism, including that old chestnut that .50 cal rifles can shoot down low-flying aircraft. Nevermind that no crime like this has ever actually happened, it's reason to go gun-grabbing!
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Agreed, the article is highly alarmist, and full of factual errors about the cross-border weapons trade and gun laws (and firearms themselves). I think the author's most cogent argument regards the BATF themselves. For years, I've argued - against most fellow RKBAers - that the ATF isn't really the Orwellian apparatus of oppression that the NRA makes it out to be. I think Operation Fast and Furious is a testament to their incompetence and/or impotence (the FP columnist argues that it's mostly the latter). If BATF is unable to stop weapons from reaching cartels across the U.S.-Mexico border, I'd like to know how anyone expects them to enforce a federal gun ban/confiscation program that would involve collecting millions of firearms across the entire country - assuming that the political capital to legislatively enact such a ban ever existed (which it never will).
In other words, this is why I think gun-ban alarmists need to shut up - permanently. Not that I expect they will...
