SLL recalls a Biblical injunction to the effect that you shouldn’t criticize the mote in someone else’s eye when you’ve got a humungous log in yours (okay, the Bible omitted the word “humungous”). That injunctions is appropriate here. From Will Porter at antiwar.com:
Almost immediately after the latest mass shooting incident in Orlando, Fla. last Sunday, the typical hue and cry regarding weapons bans has again crept out from the White House and state lawmakers.
In a statement to the press on Tuesday the President expressed support for a ban on “assault weapons,” exhorting Congress to “Make it harder for terrorists to use these weapons to kill us.”
Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton also weighed in with support for tougher restrictions, rolling out the mantra of “common sense gun reform.”
“Florida doesn’t regulate assault weapons or .50 caliber rifles or large-capacity ammunition magazines,” Clinton told CNN on Monday. “It doesn’t require a permit to purchase a gun. It doesn’t require any registration, whatsoever.”
Pandering and virtue signaling notwithstanding, it is the height of irony that such outrage effluxes from the mouths of two well-known political arms peddlers.
According to a December 2015 report from the Congressional Research Service, “In 2014, the United States led in arms transfer agreements worldwide, making agreements valued at $36.2 billion (50.4% of all such agreements).” That figure was up from $26.7 billion in the previous year.
While our humanitarians with guillotines wax compassionate about gun deaths in the United States, they help to flood the world with all manner of bombs, munitions, machine guns, and fighter jets.
Mother Jones reported earlier this year that, since 2009, the Obama administration has made over $200 billion in arms deals – more than any other presidency – including the sale of legally-questionable cluster munitions to the state of Saudi Arabia to be used in its ongoing war with the nation of Yemen. (The Obama administration quietly put the kibosh on those sales in late May.)
Clinton, for her part, is no stranger to weapons deals. In 2011 her State Department oversaw a $29.4 billion fighter jet sale to the Saudis, a “top priority” for the then-Secretary according to Andrew Shapiro, the former State Department Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs.
What’s more, an International Business Times investigation found that “Under Clinton’s leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation.” Those include such rights-respecting regimes as Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.
“In all,” the report continues, “governments and corporations involved in the arms deals approved by Clinton’s State Department have delivered between $54 million and $141 million to the Clinton Foundation as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to the Clinton family, according to foundation and State Department records.”
The noble proclamations from two of America’s top gun controllers ought to ring hollow in the face of these facts, especially the President’s reference to terrorists. Both Obama and his former Secretary of State have shown great willingness to arm violent jihadists from Libya to Syria.
To continue reading: World’s Largest Arms Dealers Lecture Americans on ‘Assault Weapons’
