ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The United States of America has turned into bizarro land. Think of this: Our very own Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), under the direct guidance of the attorney general of the United States - America’s top cop, mind you - not only allowed, but encouraged American gun dealers to sell about 2,000 guns to known punks involved in the drug trade in order to trace the guns to Mexican drug cartels. If you think that’s unbelievably nuts, get a load of this: The suspected goons who bought the guns were not even placed under law enforcement surveillance.

This is analogous to the Drug Enforcement Administration knowingly allowing international dope pushers to sell heroin on American streets without placing the dope dealers under surveillance in hopes that somehow, some way, the dope pushers would enable the DEA to trace the heroin back to some dirty, cave-dwelling Afghan opium poppy farmer so we could then poison the farmer’s poppy fields. Wait a minute, let’s not give this crackpot administration any more loony ideas.

In all of its bureaucratic buffoonery, the ATF lost control of the weapons. Of course it did, as there were no electronic tracing components on the guns. Our less-than-esteemed attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., to whom the ATF reports, claimed not to know a thing about this brain-dead operation.

What kind of inebriated idiot would hatch an evil scheme such as this and then believe that, somehow, the guns could be traced to Mexican drug cartels without an electronic tracing component? This isn’t some low-ranking bureaucratic village idiot but a high-ranking government bureaucratic idiot who is paid by U.S. taxpayers.

It’s not as if the drug cartels needed any more guns. An estimated 35,000 Mexicans have been slaughtered in recent years in drug-related violence. What could an additional 2,000 guns provide the already heavily armed drug cartels, which get all the fully automatic machine guns they could possibly want from their own military and Central American gunrunners? Are you kidding me?

We should be given the names of the bureaucratic idiots at ATF who hatched this criminal idea and the bureaucratic punks who authorized it. They shouldn’t just be fired. They should be prosecuted and put in a cage with other gunrunning thugs. That’s what this was: a U.S. government-sanctioned gun-smuggling scheme.

Meanwhile, because the bureaucratic punks in Washington who hatched and approved this terminally brain-dead gunrunning idea have not been charged with a crime, all across America, law-abiding citizens must comply with onerous gun restrictions that make them victims. Great. Punish the good guys. That seems to be standard operating procedure in Barack Obama’s and Eric Holder’s America.

More guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens ultimately ensures more dead bad guys - not more guns in the hands of violent dope dealers. I want an attorney general who declares open season on the recidivistic, violent punks who victimize law-abiding Americans.

Americans addicted to common sense have always had a healthy disdain for government bureaucrats addicted to power. Our instinctual distrust for government is further fueled by Mr. Holder’s ATF Operation Fast and Furious. At its core it was stupid, sinister, evil and criminal.

The only thing fast and furious that ought to happen is a full-on murder investigation by the FBI of the government goons who hatched, authorized and now are covering up this brain-dead, criminal scheme, which ended up costing the life of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Fast and Furious stinks. It smells just like Watergate did, only worse.

Ted Nugent is an American rock ‘n’ roll, sporting and political activist icon. He is the author of “Ted, White, and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto” and “God, Guns & Rock ‘N’ Roll” (Regnery Publishing).

Sign up for Daily Opinion Newsletter Manage Newsletters

Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.