Let's start with background. Republicans in congress and conservative media are furious over a scandal involving Operation Fast and Furious, a "gunwalking" program. What is a gunwalking program?
For a long time, the US has been fighting a "war" on drugs and drug cartels in Mexico. One idea for finding and convicting high-level drug cartel officials in Mexico, devised by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), was to allow, arrange, and monitor the "illegal" sale of US firearms to Mexican cartels, a kind of sting operation. Follow the guns to the criminals.
The reason Republicans and conservative media are so um...up in arms...about Fast and Furious is because they believe that gunwalking and Fast and Furious were surreptitiously planned by the Obama administration and Attorney General Eric Holder as an underhanded way of imposing stricter gun controls on the US population in general. The reasoning behind this conspiracy theory goes like this: by intentionally selling firearms to Mexican cartels, drug-related gun violence in Mexico would intensify, so much so that the American people would be horrified and call upon the US government to impose stricter gun regulations.
I don't like wasting my time with such conspiracy theories, but since this one has taken off and become so mainstream, I feel the need to point out a few really obvious problems with this theory.
First, the ATF devised and began practicing the gunwalking scheme as far back as 2006. This is heavily documented, even by Fox News. 2006 was in the middle of the G.W. Bush administration. Obama did not assume the presidency until 2008. So when gunwalking schemes were devised and enacted for two years before Obama became president, why weren't Republicans pointing out the conspiracy then? Why isn't gunwalking a Bush administration conspiracy to curtail gun rights? Why all of a sudden is this an Obama conspiracy? The answer to these questions is perhaps best summarized by National Rifle Association head Wayne LaPierre, who has been presupposing that Obama secretly wants to abolish the Second Amendment and crack down on guns in America. Whether you think this should be done or not, it's clearly something that the Obama administration has not attempted to do in any way, shape, or form. For LaPierre, however, the fact that Obama has not cracked down on gun rights is evidence that he secretly wants to crack down on gun rights. On this point, LaPierre is either a shameless demagogue or a raving lunatic. You decide.
We can see, then, that the conspiracy theory about Obama deliberately continuing with Bush-era gunwalking operations in order to restrict gun rights is just another manifestation of an equally unsubstantiated conspiracy theory proffered by NRA president LaPierre. If the material truth does not show that the Obama administration has made any effort whatsoever to restrict gun rights, then those who "refused to be fooled" by the absence of Obama's rabid anti-gun politics can simply make up a story or stories about Obama secretly and surreptitiously espousing rabid anti-gun politics. This type of blather happens on the left and the right; but only on the right does it climb the ladder to congressional hearings and Supreme Court rulings.
The second most basic flaw of the Republican Fast and Furious conspiracy theory is even more simply stated. Horrific drug-related violence in Mexico and at the Mexico-US border has persisted for decades, and yet it hardly even makes news. Since when does the American public give a shit about drug-related violence in Mexico? The idea, in other words, that all of a sudden, after years of super-publicized school shootings like Columbine, college campus gun massacres like VA Tech, political assassination attempts like Gabby Giffords, and over 8000 gun-related murders in the US per year, Americans are going to turn around and demand an end to the Second Amendment and a tightening of gun control because of drug-related violence in Mexico, is absolutely ludicrous. It's so ludicrous that it doesn't even begin to register as a plausible motive for the Fast and Furious conspiracy.
Finally, the third most basic problem with the Republican Fast and Furious conspiracy theory is that it's also, blatantly, a bait-and-switch tactic. Truthfully, sting operations like gunwalking--including ATF Operation Fast and Furious, which, whether Obama and Holder knew much about it or not, has gone on under the Obama administration--can be extremely risky. These operations have not been successful, and may have cost US agents their lives because of high risk and improper oversight. Because of this there is a legitimate and ongoing investigation into Operation Fast and Furious and its Bush-era antecedents. Some of these investigations have been called for by Attorney General Holder himself. And these investigations do rise to the level of legitimate news. On the other hand, proponents of the Republican conspiracy theory and its news media advocates have latched onto these legitimate investigations like leeches, offering a parallel and totally unsubstantiated and entirely absurd conspiracy theory that prejudices coverage of the legitimate investigations and diverts attention from the real issues surrounding gunwalking operations. The conspiracy theory is, in other words, a bait-and-switch maneuver, designed to feed off of a legitimate news cycle, but replace the legitimate parts with conspiracy bullshit.
