Jon Stewart on NRA gun enforcement deception

Stewart nails them again. In this clip he shows a key regressive argument against more gun laws is that we cannot even enforce the laws we already have on the books. And that those laws should be handled on a federal level by the ATF. However we have not had a Director of the ATF for the last 6 years.  Why? The Senate refuses to confirm one. This confirmation for a non-Cabinet position was inserted into the Patriot Act by a WI congressman, who just happened to receive the NRA's coveted Defender of Freedom Award.



In the next clip the ATF still has agents, but they haven't added to their employment numbers since 1972. No matter, their hands are literally tied. It was found that 50% of guns used in crimes could be traced back to 1% of gun dealers. If the ATF could create a federal registry for these transactions they'd nab the bad guys. But the ATF is prohibited from creating this registry. Plus the ATF is allowed to inspect gun dealers only once a year, but given their limited workforce it is done more like once every 17 years. The ATF cannot require gun dealers to keep track of their own inventory. Ten years ago a congressman stuck an amendment into a spending bill that severely limited them to do what the NRA says they want them to do. The bill allowed dealers to ignore police requests for assistance; it denied Congress crime data; it ended the oversight of used firearm sales; it required the destruction of background check records within 24 hours. And the NRA wrote this amendment.