Fast and Furious: Cummings Pushes Back

Attorney General Holder gets another chance to testify to the House Oversight Committee Thursday morning.  Just in time, Representative Elijah Cummings has released a report [pdf] in which he claims to clear the White House and Department of Justice of any complicity in this matter.  Of course, if they were already clear, then why is this unsolicited "report" even necessary?

He doesn't go so far as to claim ignorance, only that,

[t]he Committee has obtained no evidence that Operation Fast and Furious was a politically-motivated operation conceived and directed by high-level Obama Administration political appointees at the Department of Justice.

Instead, Cummings settles for declaring that the administration did not conceive or direct Fast and Furious.  He seems to think that justification hinges on such semantic differences.

Entitled "Fatally Flawed: Five Years of Gun-walking in Arizona," the report tries to lump Fast and Furious in with prior such schemes as Wide Receiver ("see?  George Bush did it, too!"), and it attempts to portray the entire situation as something isolated to rogue elements in the Phoenix field division.

Of course, this flies in the face of facts.  US Attorney Dennis Burke has resigned after being caught providing false claims to his superiors, and newly available documentation [pdf] from NPR shows that Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer and ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson still approved of the operation's details as of February of 2011.

Allais Loop

A glitch in cubic interpolation. Sometimes the most novel results are the least expected.

Allais Loop  (01:03)

After the Blackout

I'm uncertain how effective the Wikipedia blackout truly was. Most people who've mentioned it to me saw it as a massive inconvenience and little more. That's a shame, because a some lessons are being lost there.

1. SOPA is a bad bill, and one with potentially dire consequences for the entire internet.


2. At least one major pillar of the online community was willing to step up to protest it.


3. Most people don't care and would rather not be bothered. They had to endure 24 hours being deprived of a resource for which they pay nothing, and for which there are alternatives.

I hope just a small fraction of those folks will actually follow up and research the bill. If even some people choose to get active about it, all the better.

Speaking of which, those of us in Georgia really need to reconsider our choices in representation. Both Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss are cosponsors of the Senate version. Both men also voted for S. 1867. Remember that one? Chambliss has until 2014, and Isakson until 2016, but I won't be forgetting this.

Phil Gingrey is supporting the House version, and he is up for reelection this year. I'll vote for a Democrat who respects his constituents before I will a Republican who sells them out.

It's the Economy, Stupid

The FBI reports that there were 500,000 NICS checks performed for gun purchases in the week before Christmas. That's a record, beating even the whole post-election rush. There were 129,166 checks this Black Friday, beating the previous record of 98,000 in 2008.

The media, few of whom are in touch with the gun culture, are postulating all sorts of reasons for the boom, but they're missing the real factors. I submit that this year's record numbers are more due to increased interest in the hobby and confidence in the economy than they are to paranoia, crime, or politics.

In 2009, panic buying was the order of the day. They were coming for our guns! Get 'em before the ban! Society was on the verge of collapse. People were buying guns just to buy guns. I worried that few, if any, would actually get training or take up shooting as a pastime.

I'm relieved to say I was wrong.

The character of this year's rush was completely different: happier, calmer, more informed, and more inquisitive. A much larger percentage of buyers are repeat purchasers, and they're getting guns with the enjoyment of shooting in mind. Enrollment in training courses has risen exponentially. Folks aren't yelling about politics anymore. Rather, they're getting advice on being better shooters.

What a breath of fresh air! Now, can we just get past the whole zombie thing, please?

(Incidentally, that figure is only the number of individual checks, not the actual number of firearms transferred. Multiple firearms in the same transaction only get one check. Additionally, purchasers in many states can bypass the check if they have a carry permit, so we can likely assume the real number is 30-50% higher.)