In an article titled "Republicans refuse to confirm leader for ATF despite its troubles", L.A. Times Washington reporter David Savage wrote in part
(Read the full article here.) "Former officials say the agency, which ran a botched sting operation, needs a permanent director to guide it. But nominees to the post have met opposition from gun-rights groups."
From its title, I would infer that Mr. Savage believes that the problems with the ATF were caused by its having had only "Acting" Directors due to GOP interference with the nomination process. I would further infer that he believes that the current problems – specifically the Operation Gun Walker scandal – are entirely the result of the ATF not having permanent leadership. In an email to Mr. Savage I offered the counter hypothesis that the whole "Gun Walker" issue has nothing whatsoever to do with the permanence (or lack thereof) of the leadership in the ATF. Rather than the GOP interfering with ATF leadership
DESPITE the agency's troubles, I would suggest that the GOP refuses to accept the current nominee
BECAUSE of the agency's long and well documented chain of abuses.
As the communications director of GOA put it, the administration has
"consistently nominated hardened gun control advocates into positions that restrict the 2nd Amendment rights of Americans".
In fact recent documents turned over to Congressional investigators indicate that the
REAL PURPOSE of Operation Gun Walker was to generate support for yet
MORE restrictions to be placed upon U.S. Citizens' right to keep and bear arms.
I can understand a government's (
ANY government's) motivation to disarm the general public. Government needs a monopoly on deadly force in order to ensure its continued existence. It is enormously more difficult (but not impossible as recent events in Libya have demonstrated) for an unarmed populous to successfully rebel than for an armed populous.
I am aware that even an entirely beneficent government will have its detractors and nay-sayers. Even when a government is doing everything possible to protect the populous and provide the maximum of safety and security, some will "kick against the pricks" and bridle under the inevitable restrictions necessitated by keeping people safe and secure.
Unfortunately, true adults do not take kindly to being taken by the hand and led through a life of safety and security. True adults recognize that liberty entails risk. In order for one to have the possibility to
SUCCEED, they must have a corresponding possibility to
FAIL. Success and failure are but opposite sides of the same coin. When the possibility of failure is eliminated, the possibility to
SUCCEED is, perforce, eliminated as well.
Throughout history, many have believed that government can increase only at the expense of the individual. Larger government inevitably results in smaller individuals. And to some that is a good thing. Many - including many here - believe that the state quite properly is -
AND SHOULD BE - superior to the individual. Unfortunately, to others, myself included, an all-controlling state is anathema. Folk such as we believe that, as Carl Sandburg put it so well, "That government is best which governs least." Millions of Americans see the current trend of increasingly larger and more controlling government to be an effort to – to coin a phrase – "reduce [us] under absolute Despotism".
Such an effort by government has been considered for centuries both to confer a right and to impose a duty to rebel. The existence of such right and duty does not in any wise infer the inevitability of success. It merely makes rebellion under such circumstances both moral and ethical.
I truly wish you who are convinced of the value -
NECESSITY even - of an all controlling central government could understand the position of people who believe that the right to keep and bear arms is every bit as sacred and sacrosanct as that of freedom of the press and of speech. Alas, I suspect such will never be the case.