Year: 2009

By a vote of 17 to 2, Eric Holder’s confirmation vote has been voted out of committee and onto the Senate floor.

The votes against him were John Cornyn of Texas, and Tom Coburn of Olkahoma.  Senator Specter, who is the ranking Republican on the committee, voted yes.  Cornyn did mention gun rights among his reasons for voting no.  No doubt Coburn shared some concern also.

I anxiously await commentators suggesting if the NRA had just made this a “key vote” we could have turned around the eight votes needed, while they simultaneously denounce the NRA for being ineffectual.

UPDATE: One commenter suggests the use of a hold. A hold in this case isn’t going to stop the vote from happening on the floor.  A hold is basically a Senator telling the Senate Majority Leader that he does not wish a particular matter brought to the floor.  The Majority Leader can either heed the hold, or ignore it.  Typically a hold is used as an indication that the Senator would filibuster the vote.  It worked to stop the vote on Mike Sullivan because Harry Reid didn’t have much of a reason to ignore a Republican hold on their own President’s nominee.  In this case, Obama is going to be expecting Reid to deliver on his nominations, and Reid will almost certainly comply.  Given that 6 Republicans on the Judiciary Committee already voted yes to pass Holder’s confirmation onto the floor, the Republicans don’t have a filibuster.  Any threat of one will be empty, and Reid will know that, since the votes are already there for cloture.

Apparently this is the menace we’re exporting South of the Border:

– An AK-47 and .38-caliber Super pistol with diamond-encrusted grips found after the Nov. 2 killing of the police chief of the northern state of Sonora as he walked into a hotel about two miles south of the Arizona border.

– A .38-caliber Super pistol seized a year ago when Mexican special forces captured a top Sinaloa cartel lieutenant, Alfredo Beltran Leyva, and three members of his security team in Culiacan.

– Three assault rifles recovered after patrolling federal police officers were fired upon and responded by killing four gunmen from the Beltran Leyva drug gang on July 2 at a house in Culiacan.

This is a rare caliber in the United States.  Go into most gun shops, and they typically won’t have anything in this caliber.  Even at a gun show, you’d probably be lucky to find more than one or two.  But here’s a clue:

Drug smugglers seek out guns in America because gun laws in Mexico are more restrictive than in the United States. Mexicans must get approval for a gun purchase from the Mexican defense department and are limited to guns with a caliber no higher than the standard .38-caliber. Larger calibers are considered military weapons and are off-limits to civilians.

So, .38 Super is legal in Mexico, and tends to be a higher powered smaller diameter cartridge.  Doesn’t it stand to reason that they might be more common there, while they are relatively uncommon here?  Could it be possible that .38 caliber firearms turning up in Mexico did not originate in the United States?  I have no doubt that there are straw purchasers working for people smuggling guns to Mexico, but the only way to deal with that is to make it illegal for anyone to buy a gun, and that’s not going to happen.  You know how else we could deal with this?  Securing the border.

Steven Halbrook has an excellent op-ed in Human Events outlining the reasons the Senate should not confirm Eric Holder.