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The fact you'd say this is a pretty emblematic of how crazy the US (and this site) have become. This might seem like a hot take, but people generally don't want their leaders to be convicted felons.
Well, maybe that would have held more true back before trust in institutions collapsed. Those 22-34% are the last vestiges of that era. The thought is that anyone can lob an accusation, but a conviction carries more weight. Yes, most people understand that prosecutors would generally only bring cases that have a good chance of winning, but they can still fudge around the edges.
Nowadays, Trump could probably murder someone on live TV and a majority of the Republican voters would say he didn't do it. That's basically what the election loss denialism came down to. Why let evidence get in the way of vibes and dunking on the outgroup!
Better than felons who are unconvicted because a corrupt system protects them.
There are problems in the enforcement of justice, but it's not nearly as bad as you're making it out to be. I presume you're referring to the Hunter Biden stuff? Well, that's largely symmetrical to Trump's Russia investigation: Lots of smoke, not much actual fire (at least by the president himself), yet partisans whip themselves into a frenzy over the issue since they're getting a maximally damning picture due to their filtered media consumption. Biden could very well face a frivolous impeachment trial like Trump did as well.
Last I heard, it's been confirmed that Hunter Biden got his bribes selling access to Joe to foreign entities, and some portion of the bribe money ended up in Joe's bank account. I'm pretty sure that's a felony.
Likewise, Hillary Clinton set up an illegal email server to evade lawful oversight, sent classified documents through it, and then attempted to cover up her crimes. I'm pretty sure there are at least a few felonies there.
Likewise, Bill Clinton appears to have been a rapist.
I'm not sure if George W Bush lying the country into a disastrous war is technically a felony, but it certainly ought to be. Ditto for Obama's administration intentionally supplying arms to Mexican drug cartels, which were then used to attack and murder American citizens, in an apparent attempt to generate support for gun control legislation.
I disagree that it's not as bad as I'm making it out to be. In fact, I think it is pretty much exactly that bad. I do not concede that the existing system retains any shred of legitimacy whatsoever. All that remains is the question of how to coordinate sufficient meanness to allow something more fit to be built on its ruins.
link for more info would be appreciated
Wiki
Writeup from the first page of search results.
I don’t see your angle here. Condemning the ATF for causing the deaths of mexican and parisian civilians and that border patrol guy, implies that letting people buy weapons is complicity in murder. You can either condemn the ATF, Obama, and the right to bear arms, or none of the above.
If you're a consistent 2A gunman, you have to, you know, bite the bullet. Obviously some of the legally sold guns are going to kill people. But guns don't kill people, and anyway protection against tyranny is worth it, and so on. So the ATF is perfectly innocent here.
Selling guns to murderous criminals is a bad idea, which is why we have made it illegal. The government directly facilitating the sale of large numbers of guns to murderous criminals, on purpose, is straightforwardly evil. The fact that they did so in secret, completely failed to achieve any of the purported law-enforcement objectives they offered as excuses after the fact, punished the whistleblower who revealed their activities, and rewarded and promoted the people who planned and executed their "failed" operation undermines any claim to legitimate purposes for their activities.
No. It is not only possible but is in fact trivial to distinguish between law-abiding citizens purchasing weapons for legitimate purposes, and arms traffickers buying weapons illegally and then transfer those weapons to murderous drug cartels. Such distinction is drawn in federal law, which was deliberately circumvented by the ATF. There is no justification for your conflation of legal and knowingly illegal arms sales.
This statement seems straightforwardly absurd, for reasons stated above.
No, I don't.
They were not legally sold. The gun dealers reported the purchases to the ATF, expecting them to arrest the purchasers. The ATF declined to do so, and in fact tried (successfully in some cases) to get them to sell more guns to the criminals, claiming it was part of a legitimate law enforcement operation. Given the results, I do not find that claim credible.
No, the ATF deliberately sold guns to the cartels, and claims to a legitimate law-enforcement reason for doing so are undermined by their complete failure to secure either the weapons or the criminals, and the subsequent rewarding of these failures by the agency higher-ups, the stonewalling of all subsequent attempts at investigation, and the punishment of whistleblowers. None of that looks like innocence to me.
What gun control law, that you support, makes this sale illegal?
You made the conspiratorial claim that this was some attempt to generate support for gun control legislation, but this is contradicted by their burying of the story, which is far more consistent with common incompetence. And as I said, pleading the ATF's complete innocence requires a pro-gun-rights perspective, which is obviously a position the obama administration would be reluctant to take.
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