Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
By Larry Keane
President Joe Biden’s got a gun problem – one that’s much bigger than the federal charges his son Hunter Biden faces in court.
Table of contents
The surprise terror attacks by Hamas into Israel were made possible, in part, because of U.S. arms left behind in Afghanistan by the Biden administration. Those arms have found their way to another battlefield. Startling images showed Hamas terrorists rampaging through Israeli villages. Some images appeared to show Hamas terrorists armed with U.S.-made military arms. Some of the hundreds of thousands of small arms abandoned to Taliban terrorists in 2021 have been smuggled to Hamas terrorists and were used to kill innocent men, women and children.
President Biden has been myopically focused on stripping gun rights from law-abiding American citizens. Meanwhile, his own failed policies, coupled with diplomatic mistakes, are proving deadly. President Biden has surrendered his authority to wag his finger from Rose Garden podiums at the firearm industry. His lies that the firearm industry is responsible for illegal international arms smuggling with Mexican narco-terrorists were always untrue. Now, however, the entire world can see. Gun control’s darling president who gave them an office in The White House is America’s largest illicit arms trafficker. His deadly mistakes have cost American lives and hundreds of lives of America’s closest ally in the Middle East and empowered terrorists that chant “Death to America.”
UPDATE:
— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) October 8, 2023
Israel's Ambassador to the United States has just told the media that there are dozens of American citizens among the hostages taken by Hamas, who are now in Gaza.
American hostages are now in Gaza, as Israel bombards the area trying to destroy the Hamas terrorist… pic.twitter.com/qrBsN9tGx7
Stage Set
Just a little more than two years ago, President Biden pulled the last U.S. forces out of Afghanistan. Within moments of the last American C-17 lifting off from Kabul International Airport, Taliban forces were seen on international television collecting military weapons – from helicopters and armored vehicles to hundreds of thousands of small arms. One report described the seizure of U.S.-supplied guns as “enormous.” Taliban fighters are swapping worn AK-47s for U.S.-made M-4s and M-16s.
SEE ALSO: Why The Attack On Israel Should End the Gun-Control Debate
Later reports detailed that The White House left $7 billion in weapons and equipment in the wake of the ill-fated Afghanistan withdrawal. That consisted of 600,000 weapons – including 350,000 M-4 and M-16 rifles, 60,000 machine guns and 25,000 grenade launchers. That’s on top of the 23,825 Humvees in Afghanistan, including armored gun truck variants, and nearly 900 combat vehicles, all of which are in the hands of the Taliban, a terror organization that is the avowed enemy of the United States.
Some of them were used by Hamas terrorists invading from Gaza to kill Israeli soldiers and civilians and used to force hundreds of Israelis into captivity as hostages. As recently as June, Palestinian news agencies admitted that U.S. arms captured by Taliban forces were smuggled into Gaza and were being used by terrorists there. NBC News reported on the illicit arms supply to terrorists in Pakistan in January 2023 and Middle East Monitor reported in June that U.S. and Israeli intelligence were aware that U.S. arms were being carried by terrorists in Gaza. Newsweek also reported in June that U.S. arms seized by Taliban forces were arriving in Gaza, along with U.S.-made missiles reportedly being smuggled back to Iran to potentially supply both Hamas and Hezbollah.
Trading Gun Smuggler
This isn’t the first time President Biden and his gun control allies have been duplicitous when it comes to denying Americans their Second Amendment rights but playing fast-and-loose with supplying arms to sworn enemies, mercenaries and terrorists who target the United States and allies. In October 2022, President Biden made a prisoner swap deal with Russia. In exchange for the freedom of Brittney Griner, a WNBA star arrested in Russia on drug charges, the president authorized his State Department to free Viktor Bout, a convicted international arms smuggler from Russia, also known as “The Merchant of Death.”
Bout is a former Soviet-era military officer who was arrested in 2008 in Thailand by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in a sting for proposing a sale of tens of millions of dollars to the Colombian narco-terrorist group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The illicit sale was for $20 million worth of “a breathtaking arsenal of weapons — including hundreds of surface-to-air missiles, machine guns and sniper rifles — 10 million rounds of ammunition and five tons of plastic explosives.”
Bout’s history runs much deeper. He was identified as an illicit arms dealer by the United Nations in 2000. He was moving arms to African warlords, Middle East dictators and Central American narco-terrorist groups. His attempt to arm the FARC was what ultimately put him in prison for charges of conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, U.S. officers and employees, conspiracy to acquire missiles to destroy aircraft and conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.
Senate Corruption
President Biden’s longtime Capitol Hill gun control ally, U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), was just indicted for a corrupt bribery scheme involving, among other things, greasing the skids for small-arms sales to Egypt, which has its own troubled history of support for Hamas terrorists. Menendez is accused of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible and home mortgage payments.
Sen. Menendez has been a critic of the U.S. Munition List to Commerce Control List (USML-CCL) export reforms that were finalized under the Trump administration that put greater safeguards around defense items and ensured end-to-end verifications for U.S. manufacturers exporting firearms.
President Biden started out his presidential campaign by calling the firearm industry “the enemy.” NSSF said at the time that the comment was appalling. His presidency has focused on demagoguing the industry that continues to support law-abiding Americans who exercise their right to keep and bear arms. This industry equips our law enforcement to keep communities safe and arms our military to protect the United States against enemies. Meanwhile, arms blithely abandoned in Afghanistan are being wielded against U.S. allies.
President Biden has surrendered his moral authority to lecture the firearm industry when he lets arms slip into the hands of terrorists.
Larry Keane is Senior Vice President of Government and Public Affairs and General Counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry trade association.
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Is that not lending aid and comfort to the enemy , on the part of
the Biden administration ?
When will November 2024 ever arrive?
As always you clowns state things that prove your ignorance/stupidity or you say it knowing the facts because you know your audience won’t check. The Taliban had the date of our leaving Afghanistan when Trump gave it to them.
Imagine how horrible leaing Afghanistan in less than 3 weeks had Trump ordered the evacuation as he wanted to do. There are over half a dozen corroborating statements that Trump wanted the evacuation before 20 January. Of course Trump is kicking himself for not ordering the evacuation because he could have staged his coup successfully because the evacuation would be front and center.
well move back over there if you have it so bad here!
Trump was being lied to by US officials like Jeff Jefferies about US troops in Syria, the US Presidents really have less control than people believe. Trump wanted to pull out of longest US war in Afghanistan with as few US deaths as possible and for 18 months under Trump the number was ZERO until the fake POTUS #46 at Kabul airport. Trump had a deal worked out with Taliban that the US would keep Bagram Airfield under US control but the fake POTUS #46 broke several agreements with the Taliban. Of course the Taliban knew the dates involved in an AGREEMENT that #46 broke. This current Administration has a senile figure head that is controlled by occultists and fools, own at least that much.
The fact is Bidumb is the guy who left all the weapons behind, not Trump.
Another clown with TDS, do us a favor and take your mental illness someplace else, we are tired of fools such as yourself posting drivel here.
Looks like Mario is another ‘whack a mole’ lefty. Many of the weapons that the fake POTUS (genuine POS) #46 left behind could have been staged at Bagram and moved out of the Airfield. Everyone knew that the Afghan government would fall quickly despite what the new Administration was saying. Explain why abandoning Bagram and all those weapons was a good plan?
After 11 US Marines, 1 US Army Soldier and 1 Navy Sailor was killed at Kabul the fake POTUS wanted the area cleaned up for the Taliban. Tens of thousands of people who had no history of supporting the US lined up to get a plane ride to America. Litter everywhere, human waste piled up and the fake POTUS ordered the Marines who just lost the numbers above to clean up days of human haze mat generated from tens of thousands of Afghan opportunists. The fake POTUS wanted to deliver as clean Kabul to the Taliban and he had no respect for the USMC.
Now Mario, you said ” As always you clowns state things that prove your ignorance/stupidity or you say it knowing the facts because you know your audience won’t check.” Prove anything I said was wrong.
Maybe the federal government should have registered the serial numbers of all of those weapons Joe left behind instead of worrying about law abiding Americans.
If you know anything about the IDF, you would know that the AR15 / M16 / M4 style rifles these guys have, were IDF issued during the 90’s and 2000’s. I am in NO WAY a Brandon supporter but we have to be intellectually honest here. These are not the weapons left behind in Afghanistan.
How TF would you know where these rags got these guns? Making comments with no proof? Ashole biteme leaves 350K m4’s in that shit hole and you don’t THINK any made it to these goat fuckers humas? You gotta be a bigger fool than blueballsdog!
I’m not an expert but I have some knowledge. I have spent a significant amount of time looking into the types of small arms used by various different countries and groups for the last 23 years. The picture used for this article shows M16 style rifles and M4 style carbines in various configurations that the US mil has never used or has not used in a very long time. Long before going into Afghanistan in 2001. However, the IDF has used M16 style rifles and M4 style carbines in the exact same configurations as in the picture used for this article. From optics and slings to the various upper receiver styles and barrel lengths. Based on the picture used for this article, I can say with a high degree of certainty, that these are not from Afghanistan. I believe they were sold to the Israeli gov.
Maybe I am totally misunderstanding your points but I guess you are saying that “these guys” means the Hamas who somehow obtained their weapons from the IDF. Yeah, that have could happened over the course of many years. Not sure what you might have seen to make you believe that this is the case but unless there are serial #s are traced all theories are just speculation. I doubt the time frame you cite would preclude weapons from the “90’s and 2000’s” from the US war in Afghanistan that was over 20 years.
Well before the Hamas raid into Israel, many people were worried where the weapons used in Afghanistan and Ukraine might end up. Its a concern that if I had to go back and find was mentioned here by myself and others. I remember mentioning specifically Kashmir. Maybe we can agree that the anti 2A politicians should stop running guns into Mexico, Ukraine and everywhere else? Bush (41, 43), Clinton, Biden and Obama have waged far flung wars and destabilized the globe.
carry handles haven’t been a thing for decades in us weapons.
the retro builders being exception. that said alot of guns were left in Afghanistan and they will be used on us. along with some of the stuff we dumped in Ukraine. matter of time
It’ll be interesting to see where those serial numbers trace back to.
“His deadly mistakes have cost American lives and hundreds of lives of America’s closest ally in the Middle East and empowered terrorists that chant “Death to America.” ” says the author.
But how many deaths is pResident Biden’s administration directly responsible for? Far more than the 27 counted in the linked article. Start with 30,000 to 40,000 per year just from increased drug overdoses due to drugs flowing across the wide open southern border plus the hundreds who die trying to make it into this country. Beyond the 13 servicemen killed at Abbey Gate withdrawing from Afghanistan, there were a large number of civilians killed too. Plus the untold thousands the Taliban has murdered since then. And of course all the innocent lives that will be lost through violence committed with the weapons we left behind. A competent president would have prevented Russia from invading Ukraine. How many hundreds of thousands will die in that war? Would this latest middle eastern war have happened under a different administration? Historically, no individual has been responsible for more deaths (not counting Covid) since Pol Pot.
Watch braindead Biden say Hamas was armed via the Gun show loophole or other such BS. Biden will never admitted this culpability.
did you think the moslims would return those guns? the moslim are not as stupid as Americans who want to give up their best means of defending themselves and their families. can’t fix stupid.
The world is far more unstable since the fake POTUS (genuine POS) has become the emplaced senile puppet of the lefty globalists. The Administration has a select number with a hidden eschatological agenda that is intended to be forced on the majority of US by the clueless fools on the left. The perverted “gender” wars are the begininng of changing mankind. .
if they gave them to us when we retired from the military this wouldn’t have been an issue!