Stop ATF’s Anti-Gun Zealots

by Michelle Malkin

For 30 years, Chicago banned handguns. The crime rate skyrocketed. Murders soared. Gangs blossomed. Desperate city officials even considered calling the National Guard to combat the out-of-control violence that all the “community organizing” in the world couldn’t curb. The Supreme Court struck down Chicago’s individual firearms ownership prohibition last year, but the same anti-gun zealots who put Windy City citizens’ lives at risk remain in power.

And now one of them may soon be in charge of the scandal-plagued Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Meet Andrew Traver. He’s President Obama’s nominee to head ATF. The Senate Judiciary Committee refused to act on the original nomination last fall. His name was sent up again earlier this year, and a hearing has yet to be scheduled. Obama’s czar-happy habits should be a red flag on a possible recess appointment.

Traver has spent two decades in the Chicago ATF office bureaucracy. The White House touts his record as a Navy vet and crime-fighter. But it’s his anti-gun advocacy that won him Chicago crony backing in the Beltway. Liberal Republican Sen. Mark Kirk and rabid leftist Sen. Dick Durbin both support their home state bureaucrat. Grassroots Second Amendment groups across the country (not to mention rank-and-file ATF agents) have raised their voices in opposition.-[source]