At Least They Ain't Hiding It Anymore

Doing another run around Google News today, and came across this nifty little report from Homeland Security Today about how to deal with the narco-terrorists and gunrunning operations in Mexico. While most of the report deals with policy tools for dealing with the drug part of the problem, what caught my attention was the proposals regarding guns. From the HS Today:

To increase to control gun smuggling from the United States to Mexico, federal agencies should establish "registration requirements for large-volume ammunition purchases and unassembled assault weapons kit imports", the report said, as well as reporting requirements for multiple long-arms purchases.

It further goes on to state:

The United States must provide more resources to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), the primary agency charged with stopping arms trafficking, the report said, providing it with the capacity to investigate gun purchasing plots.

Furthermore:

The federal government should contemplate a ban on assault weapons and sniper rifles (emphasis mine) as such bans "have proved successful at the state level", the report suggested. Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies must break down barriers to sharing information on gun crime data.

Leaving aside the gun trafficking issue for just a moment, this is a new, but not surprising twist in the campaign to ban guns. Before, we had the obligatory calls to ban assault weapons after every high profile shooting, whether they involved a so-called scary looking semi automatic rifle or not. We even had folks talking about using the '94 Scary Gun ban as a jumping off point to de-sensitize the public into going after other classes of boogey-man guns. The new wrinkle is the 'sniper rifle' bit. I would hazard a guess that the 20 lb brains that who wrote this probably didn't know that by using sniper rifle, they were REALLY talking about scoped bolt action rifles in calibers of .30 and up. You know, that favorite deer, elk, moose, or cape buffalo rifle in the average hunters gun safe. One would think, but I doubt it. It's a well known fact that THE hallmark of America is our marksmanship. Most of our Armed Forces are well trained in marksmanship principles even before they join up. So this little Freudian slip about sniper rifles isn't as innocuous as it seems. The other troubling thing about this report is the belief that we should give even more power and funding to a federal agency that, according to reports, has done more to arm the narco-terrorists than any gun-running operation could have hoped to accomplish. Evidently, they either haven't been following what's been going on with Project Gunwalker, or they are ignoring it all together. (My money is on the latter, personally.) For more on the Gunwalker scandal, Mike V over at Sispsey Street has all the tools, here, here, here, and here. And Michelle Malkin has a comprehensive round up of all the reporting to date, here.