The rate of US federal gun prosecutions has actually declined under Obama

Here’s an interesting item that I shared on @nomoregundeaths this morning. Despite the American gun lobby’s insistence that Barack Obama is coming to take everyone’s guns away, Mother Jones has noted that federal weapons prosecutions have declined under his administration, to their lowest levels nearly a decade.

In fairness, the decline has less to do with Obama’s policies and more to do with other factors. For one thing, the current numbers follow a record high. The Bush administration ramped up federal prosecutions in the wake of 9/11, hitting their peak in 2004 with about 11,000 cases. In contrast, the feds prosecuted less than 8,000 cases last year.

For another, the gun lobby’s efforts to neuter the ATF have likely made these crimes tougher to prosecute. As Mother Jones columnist Gavin Aronsen explains, “of the 3,741 weapons cases referred to federal attorneys in 2012 that weren’t investigated, about 40 percent were determined to lack sufficient evidence to pursue. And since 2005, the number of cases referred by the ATF has exceeded the number of weapons crimes prosecuted by federal authorities.”

None of this, of course, gives us any reason to believe that Obama isn’t coming to take our guns. After all, it’s well established that Obama’s gun control plan is a secret plan. If there was actually any evidence whatsoever to support it, then it wouldn’t be much of a secret, would it?

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