[redlion]

 Cheat, on 25 December 2011 - 10:48 AM, said:

I'm wiccan so I guess not.

How do you not know either way?

 MsRose, on 25 December 2011 - 10:12 AM, said:

It's amazing how unpublicized it was when the Obama administration (not Obama personally, but the people he appointed) literally sold guns to the Mexican drug cartel. How can we not expect the world to be upset by things like that?

Spoiler

Since the start of the Mexican Drug war, 45,584 people have been murdered by the Mexican drug cartels. Among the casualties approximately 1,000 children, 1,000+ police and prosecutors and 58 reporters.

Two things. First, it is completely unreasonable to hold Obama responsible for the ATF's actions. You shouldn't mention his name as though he were involved. That's usually called slander or libel. Without doing any further research, (I'm typing this immediately after watching the video) I have my doubts about the story. None of the sources want to be named? Something is fishy about the ATF supposedly 'forcing' gun stores to sell arms. That's not their job under any president.

Second, they didn't 'literally' sell guns to the cartels. This isn't equivalent to Iran-Contra; we're not air dropping AR-15s and banana clips into Sinaloa. Even if the allegations from the video are true, at worst the ATF is forcing stores to accept cash (legal tender) for goods. The gun stores still have the right to refuse service. Even the ATF can't take that away.

Also, the video was clipped short. Anyway, I'm off to do some research on the subject. If anyone knows something further, do tell.

Edit1: Alright, a quick read of wikipedia will tell you that these ATF guys are small fry. When they were caught, they didn't even respond directly, but rather they had the Justice Department speak for them. That's how you know none of this was done on Obama's orders. These guys were not appointed by Obama. The agents of the ATF are classed as 'inferior officers' of the Fed, appointed not by Obama but by Secretaries and undersecretaries from the justice department. The ATF was given broad discretionary enforcement powers in the wake of 9/11 (George Bush, DHS, Patriot act) which has allowed them to operate without much oversight, so long as they kept coming up with 'positive' results. Allegedly, operation gunrunner was their attempt to falsify statistical data regarding the number of american guns fueling the drug cartels' violence as part of Operation eTrace (which is a failure by all counts). This is a case of police assuming more police are necessary. This has nothing to do with the head nigga in charge.

[MsRose]

 redlion, on 25 December 2011 - 11:01 PM, said:

How do you not know either way?

Two things. First, it is completely unreasonable to hold Obama responsible for the ATF's actions. You shouldn't mention his name as though he were involved. That's usually called slander or libel. Without doing any further research, (I'm typing this immediately after watching the video) I have my doubts about the story. None of the sources want to be named? Something is fishy about the ATF supposedly 'forcing' gun stores to sell arms. That's not their job under any president.

Second, they didn't 'literally' sell guns to the cartels. This isn't equivalent to Iran-Contra; we're not air dropping AR-15s and banana clips into Sinaloa. Even if the allegations from the video are true, at worst the ATF is forcing stores to accept cash (legal tender) for goods. The gun stores still have the right to refuse service. Even the ATF can't take that away.

Also, the video was clipped short. Anyway, I'm off to do some research on the subject. If anyone knows something further, do tell.

Edit1: Alright, a quick read of wikipedia will tell you that these ATF guys are small fry. When they were caught, they didn't even respond directly, but rather they had the Justice Department speak for them. That's how you know none of this was done on Obama's orders. These guys were not appointed by Obama. The agents of the ATF are classed as 'inferior officers' of the Fed, appointed not by Obama but by Secretaries and undersecretaries from the justice department. The ATF was given broad discretionary enforcement powers in the wake of 9/11 (George Bush, DHS, Patriot act) which has allowed them to operate without much oversight, so long as they kept coming up with 'positive' results. Allegedly, operation gunrunner was their attempt to falsify statistical data regarding the number of american guns fueling the drug cartels' violence as part of Operation eTrace (which is a failure by all counts). This is a case of police assuming more police are necessary. This has nothing to do with the head nigga in charge.

Alright alright, I recant: Obama in no shape or form had anything to do with these jerks. It would appear that I was misinformed via my friend Troy (damn you Troy!)

EDIT: I think the confusion was caused by the flashy titles people were using while writing about the story: "Project Gunrunner directly linked to Obama" Which is incredibly misleading because the only ties are extremely (extremely) loose. But the way it was explained to me, which is also incorrect, was that people whom he appointed in ATF were responsible. It seemed plausible to me because it's impossible to appoint so many positions and not have one bad apple. Thanks for digging.