They want another shot at your guns

From ABC:

The Obama administration will seek to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 during the Bush administration, Attorney General Eric Holder said today.

"As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons," Holder told reporters.

After the free ride that Obama has been given by the Democrat party and the mainstream media (sorry, redundant) I suppose that it is understandable that he lacks a realistic sense of what is possible and what should be avoided.

It is possible to ram a giant pork-laden spending bill which contains a massive expansion of federal government power through the legislature because the public has been driven into a state of near hysteria by talk (much of it pouring from the mouth of B. Hussein Obama) that we are experiencing the "worst economy since the Great Depression" (when the numbers actually show that we are experiencing the worst economy since the Carter Recession of early 80's).

However "gun violence" is not an issue over which the media or the politicians have managed to generate panic in recent times so Obama's current desire to bring back the "assault weapons" ban is likely to find a very different reception in the halls of congress (even a Democrat controlled congress) than the recent "stimulus" bill.

The fact is that even people as inherently stupid as Democrat politicians have finally learned the lesson that gun control is a losing issue. With Ted Kennedy busy preparing for his eternal cruise on the SS Brimstone he will not even be able to wave his brothers' bloody shirts around for dramatic effect during the debates. There hasn't even been a massive high-profile school shooting this year to generate some pressure to "do something" - even if it's wrong.

So the administration is attempting to create some kind of rationale for depriving the American people of their liberty and property by invoking the threat of heavily armed Mexican drug gangs:

Holder said that putting the ban back in place would not only be a positive move by the United States, it would help cut down on the flow of guns going across the border into Mexico, which is struggling with heavy violence among drug cartels along the border.

"I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum." Holder said at a news conference on the arrest of more than 700 people in a drug enforcement crackdown on Mexican drug cartels operating in the U.S.

Mexican government officials have complained that the availability of sophisticated guns from the United States have emboldened drug traffickers to fight over access routes into the U.S.

A State Department travel warning issued Feb. 20, 2009, reflected government concerns about the violence.

"Some recent Mexican army and police confrontations with drug cartels have resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades," the warning said. "Large firefights have taken place in many towns and cities across Mexico, but most recently in northern Mexico, including Tijuana, Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez."

So let me get this straight. . . Banning SEMIAUTOMATIC rifles in North Carolina will keep FULLY AUTOMATIC rifles and GRENADES out of the hands of drug cartels in Mexico?

Notice the old left-liberal bait and switch where two completely different things are brought together and discussed as though they were the same thing and then a false choice is presented to the voters.

If, and it is a huge IF, any of the fully automatic assault rifles being used by the Mexican drug runners came from the United States they were not purchased in American gun stores or gun shows. They were either stolen from military or law enforcement in this country or they were sold onto the black market by Nicaraguan Contras that we aided in their fight against the Sandinistas or by elements of the El Salvadorian military or police whom we supplied in their civil war against Soviet and Cuban backed revolutionaries.

However what hat I find a great deal more likely is that the Mexican cartels are armed with Soviet bloc weapons which the Soviets and Cubans poured into central America during their attempts to export Castro's revolution into the American continent. That or they are simply taking the billions of dollars in drug profits they have at their disposal and buying new weapons from Cuba or some Eastern European or even Russian source.

Support from that theory comes from another article on ABC's website datelined May of last year:

Mexico's federal police need more-powerful weapons to battle heavily armed drug cartels, a senior police official said Wednesday

Gen. Rodolfo Cruz said seven federal officers killed Tuesday in a shootout in Culiacan were outgunned by members of the Sinaloa cartel.

Cruz told reporters in Culiacan, Sonora that the federal government was sending 200 more officers to state to join the 749 already stationed there. But he said agents really need high-caliber weapons to face traffickers armed with armor-piercing bullets and AK-47s.

So unless we are to believe that the Mexican drug cartels have rearmed themselves over the last 10 months it is Soviet bloc weapons the cartels are carrying. This means that no law banning any kind of American firearm would have the slightest effect on the firepower available to the Mexican gangs.

The fact that the administration's stated reason for bringing back the assault weapons ban can be shown to be a clumsily executed laughable lie by someone willing to do a Google search on "Mexican, police, weapons" does not bode well for the little messiah's attempt to disarm his political and cultural opponents (which is what it comes down to in the end; left-wing Democrats know that the kind of people who like guns don't vote for them). Congressional Democrats, especially House members, remember how deeply unpopular the last assault weapons ban was among the firearms community and they remember the part those "gun people" played in engineering the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. They know that the more the public learns about the "stimulus" bill they just passed the angrier they are going to become.

The last thing a Democrat House member needs (especially one from the South, the Southwest or the Midwest) is to hand his Republican opponent in 2010 the gun control issue to beat him over the head with. However much Nancy Pelosi may personally want to ban all privately owned firearms (except those in the hands of leftist elites like Stephen Spielberg, who collects machine guns, or Diane Feinstein, who has a permit to carry a concealed handgun in San Francisco, or any of the other politically connected millionaires and celebrities who have permission to carry in places like New York City where ordinary citizens are left defenseless) she will bow to pressure from rank and file House members who need to be reelected every two years.

Yes I know Pelosi isn't the brightest bulb in the congressional chandelier, but even she isn't stupid enough to risk her Speaker's gavel over an issue which will only please the Sarah Brady brigades who in the end don't donate all that much money or turn out all that many voters on election day.

The fact is that if there were any real will to enact more gun control laws in congress they would have added them to the "stimulus" bill along with Harry Reid's supertrain and Nancy Pelosi's frog subsidy and the mafia museum and the repeal of welfare reform and all the other left-wing goodies that the Democrats tossed into that toxic stew.

Obama and the congressional left can and will (in fact have done) a great many bad things between now and 2010 but I really don't think new gun control is going to be one of them.