Confused on the concept

by David Safier

I'm trying to figure this out.

The NRA and Rep. Darrell Issa think it's absolutely awful that about 2,000 guns made their way into Mexico during the ATF's Operation Fast and Furious. Those guns most likely went into the hands of criminal organizations and have been used to kill people.

But as everyone knows (though the NRA and Issa won't acknowledge it), those few thousand guns are a very small tip of a very large iceberg loaded with guns flowing from the U.S. into Mexico. If Operation Fast and Furious is bad, the huge movement of guns is even worse.

So why is it the NRA opposes a new rule that says the authorities have to be alerted when anyone buys more than one high-powered rifle over a five day period? Many of those people are straw buyers, and the guns end up in the hands of the same people Operation Fast and Furious was trying to target. Doesn't it make sense to try and identify gun runners and slow the flow of guns across the border?

The NRA claims the new rule is a smoke screen to distract people from the Fast and Furious program. But isn't it the other way around? Isn't the NRA/Darrell Issa focus on the ATF's mishandling of a sting operation an attempt to create a smoke screen to obscure the source of the problem — our ridiculously lax gun purchasing regulations?