The NRA is rapidly outpacing Jesse Ventura and radio host Alex Jones as the biggest purveyor of America's Most Ridiculous Conspiracy Theories. This time, the Obama administration is evidently arming drug cartels in Mexico with machine guns.
The director of the organization thinks that DOJ gave weapons to Mexican drug cartels during Operation Fast and Furious in an effort to churn up support for changing gun laws.
National Rifle Association Director Wayne LaPierre — who has also suggested that the fact that Obama has not cracked down on guns is just part of a long term scheme to actually crack down on guns — has been recently floating the conspiracy theory that Fast and Furious was a way to impose stricter guns laws.
It's remarkable how fanatical they are about protecting firearms -- even to the point of totally lying to their own supporters. They're setting up their supporters with easily debunked information, thus making everyone associated with the NRA appear just as insane as LaPierre.
The government obviously isn't supplying guns to the cartels. How do we know? This:
The NRA ad states that “internal memos, addressed directly to Holder in the preceding months, made clear Holder’s department was pushing Operation Fast and Furious, firearms supplied to Mexican drug trafficking cartels.”
Actually, the memo in question states that the head of the gun-trafficking ring, Manuel Celis-Acosta, “and [redacted] straw purchasers are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug trafficking cartels.”
Manuel Celis-Acosta and his cohorts bought the guns. Fact.
Then again, hmmm. "Manuel Celis-Acosta" has the same number of syllables as... "Barack Hussein Obama."
(This post is written as part of the Media Matters Gun Facts fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship is to further Media Matters’ mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, gun violence, and extremism, the fellowship program is designed to fight this misinformation with facts.)