[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 106 (Friday, July 15, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H5090-H5091]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
UNDERMINING THE ATF
(Mr. QUIGLEY asked and was given permission to address the House for
1 minute.)
Mr. QUIGLEY. Mark Twain is credited with quipping: ``Denial ain't
just a river in Egypt.'' If he were around today, he might add: It also
passes for gun policy in the U.S. Congress.
The ATF is under fast and furious fire right now, and rightly so.
Allowing hundreds of guns to ``walk'' in the hopes of catching big fish
traffickers was terribly ill advised. But so too is Congress's excuse
for gun policy. And sorry, folks, but the two are not entirely
unrelated. If Congress wants to crack down on straw purchasing and stop
the trafficking of firearms to Mexico, it is operating from the mother
of all playbooks of how you would not accomplish it:
Chapter 1, ensure that the ATF remains devoid of leadership; Chapter
2,
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pass only perfunctory straw purchasing laws; Chapter 3, attempt to
block a simple commonsense proposal that border State dealers report
multiple sales of AK-47s; Chapter 4, author legislation to immunize
corrupt gun dealers and call it the ATF Modernization Act.
It's true: ``Denial River'' in Congress runs vast, wide, and deep.
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