By John Seiler

The L.A. Times’ anti-gun obsessive George Skelton now wants your bullets. He writes:

“From what I’ve been reading, the Santa Monica killer was packing an illegal assault rifle and 40 high-capacity ammunition magazines. He sprayed 100 bullets and had access to 1,300.

“And, oh yes, he was a mental case.

“The guy’s exact background and how he obtained his war-ready arsenal weren’t clear as of this writing….

“And his stockpile of 1,300 rounds of ammo is evidence that background checks are needed for bullet buyers.

“Guns don’t kill people. Bullets do.”

But as Skelton himself detailed, the shooter used only “100 bullets.”  So California restrictions on buying bullets wouldn’t have changed anything. The shooter could just have driven to Arizona to buy them. If bullets were banned everywhere, it would not be that hard to get 100 of them on the black market. You know, the same black market where anti-gun President Obama dumped weapons in the Fast and Furious Scandal, leading to the death of one American border patrol agent and hundreds of Mexicans.

So the same government that spread guns around like broomsticks is supposed to stop bullet purchases?

As to the gun, according to CBS News:

“The assault rifle that 23-year-old John Zawahri used in his Santa Monica shooting spree is illegal in California. But Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks said Zawahri came up with an enterprising solution.

“‘We know Zawahri was able to buy gun components from various sources across the country to build his own .223 semi-automatic rifle,’ she said. 

“Components to build a semi-automatic rifle are available on the Internet. So are the assembly instructions. 

“The sale of most gun parts online is not regulated — except for one critical component. It’s called the lower receiver. It holds the mechanical parts of the gun, such as the trigger. A background check is required to buy one.

“But police believe Zawahri got around that by buying a partially-completed lower receiver and modifying it. Gun enthusiasts call them 80-percent receivers.”

If such Internet sales were banned, how would they be policed? Would Skelton give even more power to the Stasi-NSA to snoop on us? Would we suffer yet more violations of our Fourth Amendment rights?

As to Zawahri being a “mental case,” as Skelton says: How would he ban “mental cases” from buying guns? Would he use the new Obamacare comprehensive records, or the IRS’s new powers to impose Obamacare, to ferret out such people? Would they include people who ever were: depressed, had alcohol or drug problems, disliked the government?

Such “mental case” checks would end up turning American psychiatry into Soviet psychiatry, in which anyone who opposed the regime was considered nuts, because how could rational person be against the “Radiant Future” of “scientific socialism”?

The road of gun control leads directly to a totalitarian government.

By John Seiler

NEWPORT BEACH — Speaking at the Pacific Club today, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, said he would continue to hold Attorney General Eric Holder’s feet to the fire. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which Issa chairs, has been stonewalled by Holder on turning over documents concerning the Operation Fast and Furious scandal. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms purposely allowed Mexican drug gangs to buy American weapons, leading to the deaths of federal agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexicans.

Issa spoke before about 120 Orange County community and government leaders in an event sponsored by the Pacific Research Institute, CalWatchDog.com’s parent think tank.

Issa said that members of his staff were meeting with Holder’s staff at the same time Issa’s speech was being given, noon Pacific time, 3 pm Eastern time. “Every single word will be recorded,” he said. “At some point, someone has to be held accountable for Brian Terry and hundreds of others dying.”

He expected that, eventually, a vote on holding Holder in contempt of Congress would be held on his committee, with Republicans voting Yea, and Democrats voting Nea.

In a report that came out just after Issa’s speech, CNN wrote:

“Facing a possible contempt vote by a House committee, Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday offered to release more records of a botched gun probe and proposed a quick face-to-face meeting with the committee’s chairman.

“In a two-page letter to Rep. Darrell Issa, Holder promised to provide documents he has so far refused to turn over, arguing they were outside the scope of the committee’s investigation of the ‘Fast and Furious‘ firearms probe. The offer follows a decision by Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to narrow the committee’s request to exclude sensitive law enforcement information relating to the investigation.”

“Holder called his offer ‘an extraordinary accommodation of the committee’s interest’ and urged Issa to meet with him by Monday.”

Government needs to be limited

On other matters, Issa spoke of the need to limit an out-of-control government. He excoriated Democrats for failing to initiate any serious investigation of President Obama when Democrats controlled the oversight committee from 2009-10. But he also criticized Republicans in Congress for failing adequately to investigate their own president, George W. Bush, when they were in the majority from 2003-2006.

Issa also insisted that, should he continue as the oversight committee’s chairman next year, and should Republican Mitt Romney be elected, he would not soften investigations of his own party’s chief executive as both Democrats and Republicans have done recently.

He called Washington’s many agencies and departments a “swamp” that has grown for decades under presidents both Democratic and Republican, although growing least under President Ronald Reagan. “The challenge of people who want to return America to a greater liberty is accountability.”

He called for legislation that mandates re-authorizing all bills after 10 years. As things are, new bureaus and departments are self-perpetuating, with the executive branch deciding how new contingencies are met — and government growing along the way. Instead, Issa insisted, Congress should be forced to look at everything it has authorized once a decade to fine tune what is being done, saving the taxpayers’ money — or even eliminate a function no longer needed.

And he called for the Senate to pass the DATA Act, approved in the House in April, which would establish a searchable database of all federal government information.

No to High-Speed Rail

Turning to California, Issa said of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, “California is broke and doesn’t have the money to build it. What I have to do is make sure the Feds don’t come in and provide it.” He added that, if his oversight committee had more resources for investigations, an investigation would uncover more  irregularities and, “We could kill it.”

Currently, Gov. Jerry Brown is seeking to advance what is being called the “Browndoggle.” Proposition 1A, which voters passed in 2008, authorized $9.9 billion in bonds for the project, which would add about $1 billion a year to the general fund for bond repayments.

And the federal government is slated to spend $3.5 billion on the Browndoggle.

Issa concluded by pointing out that there’s one area of the country where economic growth is soaring: the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., where the federal functionaries live who make twice what equivalent private-sector workers make.