By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
When Eric Holder was a deputy attorney general in 1995 under the Clinton Administration, he launched an effort to discourage young people from carrying guns, and when he talked to a Democrat women’s group about it, he said people needed to be “brainwashed” into thinking differently about firearms.
A video of his remarks surfaced recently from Breitbart, and in its wake, gun rights activists are suggesting that this is a smoking gun that explains why Holder’s Justice Department launched Operation Fast and Furious: to promote a new gun control agenda.
“One thing that I think is clear with young people and with adults as well,” Holder told the Woman’s National Democratic Club, “is that we have to be repetitive about this. It’s not enough to simply have a catchy ad on a Monday and then only do it on a Monday. We need to do this every day of the week and just really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.”
The video, recorded by C-SPAN, was unearthed by Breitbart and posted on that group’s website. Within hours, it had raced across cyberspace and gun owners in particular were making hay out of it. Reader comments on Breitbart’s website were largely negative.
“This is proof that Fast and Furious was a false flag operation and this man and the President should be arrested for murder of the not only the countless deaths in Mexico, but for the border patrol man killed by one of the very weapons they gave to the Mexican drug cartels,” said one Breitbart reader.
Holder told his 1995 audience that his campaign would reach out to celebrities, athletes and school officials, the latter whom he hoped would “make a part of everyday an anti-violence, anti-gun message.”
Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, told TGM that he remembered Holder’s comments from almost 17 years ago.
“I’m glad that Breitbart dug that up,” he said.
Neither Senator Charles Grassley nor Congressman Darrell Issa, two Capitol Hill Republicans who have been investigating Operation Fast and Furious for more than a year, commented on Breitbart’s exercise in déjà vu.
Many believe that Fast and Furious was an operation launched deliberately to allow guns to walk into Mexico so the Obama administration could push a new gun control initiative through Congress. An estimated 2,000 guns were walked during the operation, which abruptly ended with the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in mid-December 2010.
Gun trafficking from that operation apparently was used as a catalyst for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to issue a demand letter to firearms retailers in four Southwest states to report all multiple sales of long guns.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shepdQUhhNg
