NRA going after AG Holder

I've been writing about the fact that Republicans are going after Attorney General Eric Holder over the "Fast and Furious" operation - in which ATF agents allowed legally purchased firearms to be "walked" into Mexico in order to track them to drug cartels. After Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) accused Holder of being "an accessory to murder," that job got a bit harder when it was learned that the Bush administration operated a similar program called Operation Wide Receiver.

What is supremely rich in irony is that now the NRA is going after Holder on this one. Stories about this are all over their web site (sorry, no links will be provided) and they've made a video asking people to contact President Obama to demand that he fire Holder. Oh, and of course they're using the video on their web site to raise $ for the NRA.

I suppose that it won't be too much of a stretch for folks to catch the irony of the NRA being all of the sudden shocked and horrified that guns are used in criminal activities. But it goes even deeper than that. If you notice in my first paragraph, the guns involved in these operations were all purchased LEGALLY in the U.S. As such, our relaxed gun laws have been supplying Mexican drug cartels with weapons at an alarming rate.

In response to that reality, this year the Obama administration issued a regulation that required gun dealers along the border with Mexico to report bulk sales of certain semiautomatic rifles and the NRA is suing the ruling.

The National Rifle Association filed a lawsuit on Wednesday challenging a new federal regulation requiring gun merchants along the border with Mexico to report bulk sales of certain semiautomatic rifles, contending that the Obama administration exceeded its powers by imposing the rule last month without Congressional permission...

“N.R.A. has always viewed this as a blatant attempt by the Obama administration to pursue their gun control agenda through back-door rule-making, and the N.R.A. will fight them every step of the way,” said Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the gun rights group.

Of course LaPierre now sees some nefarious plot in Fast and Furious to challenge the second amendment (ie, prove that legally purchased guns are used by criminal cartels - to which we all respond with a resounding "duh"). But then LaPierre is becoming the the king of conspiracy theories these days. He's the one claiming that President Obama's lack of action on gun control is really another nefarious plot to take away your guns.

According to National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre, the Obama administration's lack of action on gun control issues only proves just how diabolically anti-gun they are.

In a speech Friday at Florida's version of the Conservative Political Action Conference, LaPierre explained how by not pushing for new gun laws, Obama actually revealed that he is engaged in a secret plan to "lull gun owners to sleep" so that they would not vote him out of office in 2012. LaPierre claimed that Obama's "strategy" is to "get re-elected" and then "erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights."

The question for progressives is whether or not we're going to let nutjobs like this be the only voices heard on the work of AG Holder.