Lou Dobbs Stands Up for Gun Owners Again

Last night during coverage of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Drugs hearing, Lou Dobbs came to the defense of America's law abiding gun owners, questioning Senators Feinstein and Durbin's assertion (that he said were based on Brookings Institute numbers) that 2000 guns are smuggled into Mexico every day. That would be 780,000 firearms a year!!! This exchange took place between Dobbs and reporter Casey Wian:

Dobbs: Yeah, I'd like to see the audit on all of that nonsense. Durbin, with all due respect to the senator, to suggest that the reason for the violence, as he put it, American firearms, is he aware of the five principal drug cartels at war with each other, the outright law of those. What in the world is a chairman of a committee doing speaking so irresponsibly? That's absolutely -- I find it astonishing. Where do we go from here with that committee?

Wian: Well, he seems to be echoing the statements of the Obama administration. Eric Holder said that, you know, he wanted to resume the assault weapons ban, to help Mexico allegedly help Mexico or theoretically help Mexico curtail this drug cartel violence. As many other senators on that committee today pointed out, if some of those guns weren't coming from the United States, Mexican drug cartels would get them from either the Mexican army or from other nations, Lou.

Dobbs: I don't know if Senator Durbin has ever been to northern Mexico, but I'd sure like to go there with him. I'd like to show him around. And, you know what else I'd like to do? I just like to suggest, perhaps, to the senator that he think about this, that his -- his affinity with the Obama administration and the efforts of the president and the attorney general Eric Holder, to try to roll back our second amendment rights, will be, by the fiercest, I guarantee you, the most substantive resistance in the history of -- of politics in this, in this century so far at least. I mean it is just disgusting to hear that. I had been calling for secure borders here since September 11th. I have been calling for secure ports since September 11th. And now, this man, Senator Durbin has the effrontery, talking about securing the borders and winning the war on drugs because he finds it convenient to the interest of the president of Mexico. There may be a conflated interest shared. I have to say it is astonishing the man has no sense of context and what he is saying.

BATFE's William Hoover told the subcommittee the numbers are more in the hundreds. In 2007 working with the Mexican government, BATFE traced 6561 firearms. In 2008 BATFE traced 10,977 and to date in 2009, they are already approaching the 10,000 number. Even if we use this year's number as a baseline, that is still a lot less than the 780,000 number based on the Brookings Institute.