I’m sick of having to rewrite the same sentence over and over about the flop of Republican “rebranding.” With comments like this I now have to wonder: are some Republicans watching too many old X-Files shows?
“President Obama has been adamant about curbing law-abiding Americans’ access and opportunities to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” said[Republican Oklahoma Sen. James] Inhofe.
“One way the Obama Administration is able to do this is by limiting what’s available in the market with federal agencies purchasing unnecessary stockpiles of ammunition.”
The issue came to the forefront this week as the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee held a hearing on it, in which Republicans balked at the bulk levels of ammunition the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has amassed over the years.
Follow the paranoid thinking — which is sure to continue to scare moderates, centrists, and independents away unless the Republicans hire a political master such as Karl Rove a smart political consultant such as Dick Morris..someone who can hypnotize voters en masse into forgetting the Twilight Zone statements coming out seemingly each week. Read more:
Democratic Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) questioned whether “conspiracy theories” about government attempts to strip American gun owners of their bullets or government plans to stockpile bullets in preparation for a civil war were the driving motivation for the hearing. He pointed to the overwhelming role the blogosphere has played in questioning why DHS needs millions of rounds of ammunition.
“To the extent that we’re responding to conspiracy theories, I think we’re really wasting everybody’s time on that,” Tierney said.
“Unsubstantiated, false conspiracy theories have no place in this committee room, hopefully. Federal ammunition purchases are a fraction of the ammunition market and they’ve been decreasing in recent years,” he said.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) agreed with Tierney, telling its members last year that the high number of bullet purchases was normal for law enforcement agencies and that people should not be paranoid about the government’s intention on this area.
“Skepticism of government is healthy. But today, there are more than enough actual threats to the Second Amendment to keep gun owners busy… there is no need to invent additional threats to our rights,” the gun group wrote.
GET IT? So EVEN THE NRA says this is a bunch of…hooey. Some fitting music:
far right hat via shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.