Friday, August 05, 2016

ATF Acting Director Brandon Campaigning for Gun Registry



An ATF spokesman who was intimately involved in the Fast and Furious cover up has been promoting a national gun registry on CBS.  On Sunday, 31 July, Deputy Director Thomas E. Brandon appeared on Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood.

Brandon was the ATF official who oversaw the discipline or more accurately the lack thereof, in the Fast and Furious operation. His role has been detailed in the americanthinker.com:
According to outgoing Director Jones's sworn testimony of April 2, 2014 before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Mr. Brandon was the person who determined disciplinary punishments for all of the ATF personnel involved in Fast and Furious. Brandon was "the ultimate decision maker." Director Jones confirmed that Thomas Brandon did not fire a single person for participation in Fast and Furious.
 Here is the testimony were Jones is forced to admit that no ATF personnel were fired over the Fast and Furious operation, and that it was the Deputy Director who made those decisions. The Deputy Director at that time was Thomas E. Brandon. From Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 2 April, 2014
Chairman Issa. Director, I understand. I am only asking did you influence or have an input into that call of his not being fired, his continuing to draw a paycheck and eventually retire at his high pay as an SES?

 Mr. Jones. I did not. 

Chairman Issa. You did not. Did your number two have that influence? 

 Mr. Jones. The process involves the Bureau deciding official and the ultimate decision-maker is the Deputy Director with appeal to me should the employee not be satisfied. 

Chairman Issa. But the employee was satisfied and number two made the call, is that fair to say for the public record? 

Mr. Jones. That is fair to say.
Thomas Brandon has now debuted as one of the Obama administration people pushing for more gun control.  In his appearance On CBS, he simply assumes a computerized database of all gun sales is "good".  He does not explain why. From cbsnews.com:
Yet, Brandon says, not having the database hurts. Indeed, after the San Bernardino shootings, it took 12 hours to find out who owned the guns used in the attack. He says a computer database would have helped, and adds that not having one simply doesn't make sense.

"There's a lot of things that don't make sense in this town, you know?" Brandon tells Schlesinger. "And, so, yeah, would it be efficient and effective? Absolutely. Would the taxpayers benefit with public safety? Absolutely. Are we allowed to do it? No."
Such a database amounts to a national gun registry.  But the position put forward by Brandon begs the question.  What is the point of determining where the gun came from? Why is that considered worthwhile?  It does not prevent any crime from taking place.  It is only worthwhile if you believe that you will somehow be able to stop criminals from obtaining guns by regulating legal sources.  It has not happened anywhere else in the world.

But as we have seen from numerous other countries, when you tighten controls on legal sources, it only pushes criminal supply into illegal sources.  Tighten the controls enough, and you create a underground supply of illegally made guns and ammunition, as in Brazil, Israel, the Philippines and India.  There is no evidence that this decreases crime rates.  It may make illegal guns more expensive; then again, it may make them more common.  In India, you can buy a "country made" pistol for $15- $20.

Even if we posit, for the sake of argument, that determining where the gun came from might be useful, what is the point of finding out where it came from 12 hours earlier?  The whole point of the current system was to allow tracing without creating a national registry.  Registration systems have failed, over and over again, at preventing crime.  They have one significant purpose; they make confiscation of guns, either incrementally over time, or all at once, much easier.

That is a good argument to eliminate the current tracing system.  It does not decrease crime, and it constantly serves as a temptation to be converted into a registration system.  When the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed, Lyndon Johnson wanted a national registration system.  It is what the original bill preceding the GCA 1968 legislation called for. From Lyndon Johnson's speech after the passage of GCA 1968 ucsb.edu:
Congress adopted most of our recommendations. But this bill--as big as this bill is--still falls short, because we just could not get the Congress to carry out the requests we made of them. I asked for the national registration of all guns and the licensing of those who carry those guns. For the fact of life is that there are over 160 million guns in this country--more firearms than families. If guns are to be kept out of the hands of the criminal, out of the hands of the insane, and out of the hands of the irresponsible, then we just must have licensing. If the criminal with a gun is to be tracked down quickly, then we must have registration in this country.



The whole purpose of the tracing system was a political compromise to prevent registration.  As tracing does not aid in crime prevention, why keep it?

The basic assumption of a registration or a tracing system is that more guns are bad.  But that is an assumption has been shown to be false.  It makes more sense to devote resources to keep guns out of the hands of specific individuals who have been shown to be irresponsible, than to attempt to track all gun sales and all gun possession, 99.9 percent of which is harmless or beneficial.

If someone cannot be trusted with a weapon, put them in jail.  They are a tiny segment of society.

T/H to weaponsman.com 

©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

let him campaign as long as it never goes through there will not be a civil war. ATF has no constitutional authority to exist, Maybe he will campaign himself out of a job. It is time to get really serious about this issue. get these so called pro gun groups off their ass and argue the real issues such as the constitutional protections and the continual violations by congress. we have a constitution it is supposed to be protected by those in office according to their oath of office. the long time statistics prove there is no need for more laws and many/all of those laws are by definition unconstitutional. the supreme court ruled if it is not written it does not exist so where is the permission for government to create an agency to infringe for the congress? show it to me in writing. Acts like the 1934 NFA are not amendments. Only an amendment can change the 26 words of the second amendment. The tenth amendment prevents the states from having any authority to modify the second amendment. the second amendment is a federal right having nothing to do with states rights to change it. we have separation of power for a valid reason. to prevent the stats from ignoring the mandates of the federal constitution. the second amendment exist, the tenth amendment exists and the right of the state to change either of them does not exist. there are no valid state gun laws and there are no valid federal gun laws because Shall Not Be infringed forbids them. each amendment stands alone or they would not have numbers. wording would have to be included to tie any of them together, that wording is not written. I am pretty well damn disgusted with these gun rights groups incompetent efforts to resolve the gun rights issues.

ScienceABC123 said...

The only purpose a national gun registry serves is a database for confiscation. If you disagree, please provide another use for it.

Anonymous said...

Paul: There is no constitutional authority to create the data base. MSN article: Man caught in Trump towers by security with a military semiautomatic pistol and a military silencer. the police investigation revealed the guy they had in custody was a dead FBI agent. the Finger prints came back belonging to an FBI agent that was supposed to have died more than ten years ago in an on duty shoot out. Better check and see if his fake name is on Hilary's payroll. What better person to have for an assassin than an expert in crime investigations trained by our government. Let ATF and the FBI explain this one. Man gets arrested in Trump towers with the weapon of an assassin that has supposedly been dead for more than 10 years? What list was he on? Missing from the casket list?

Unknown said...

Why doesn't the ATF just make a national registry? Who is gonna stop them. There is no controlling legal authority. Seriously, there is no penalty if they break the law.

Anonymous said...

Think about this. If the police recover a stolen weapon. first tell me they do not know the weapon is stolen. then explain to me why their failure to return that weapons to the rightful owner is not a second case of miss appropriation of a weapon. in other words are the police not stealing it for a second time? they will claim they could not find the owner, rob a bank and see how fast they can find you. My oldest daughter lived in a foreign country for 30 years she had no Idea of where to look for me when she decided to find me. she paid 50 dollars to a world locator system and we were in contact in two weeks. and cops claim they can not find the legal owner of a fire arm.