NRA debunks ATF’s attempted debunking of “myths”
The ATF is not our friend. While some of the individual agents may respect the Second Amendment, the bureau itself is not friendly to guns, gun owners, or our gun rights.
However, it seems that recently, the ATF has been handing out fliers at gun shows, trying to soften their image among the gun rights crowd. In fairness, that’s a smart place to do it, since you’re likely to see more of the pro-Second Amendment crowd there on a couple of given days than just about anywhere else.
These fliers are an attempt at “debunking” some “myths” about the agency.
The problem, as the NRA notes, is that they’re trying to debunk so-called myths with absolute BS.
“Myth: ATF makes the gun laws.
Fact: False: Congress makes federal gun laws; ATF enforces them.”ATF must think gun owners are completely ignorant of the workings of the modern administrative state. In fact, most of the legislating that occurs in the U.S. is carried out by administrative agencies in the form of federal regulations and increasingly creative interpretations of federal statute.
Consider two recent ATF rulemakings.
On May 21, 2021, ATF published proposed rule 2021R-05F in the Federal Register entitled “Definition of ‘Frame or Receiver’ and Identification of Firearms.”
Chiefly, the rule targets the traditional American practice of making firearms for private use without government interference. In doing so, the proposed rule would create new definitions for the terms “firearm frame or receiver,” “frame or receiver,” “firearm,” “gunsmith,” “complete weapon,” “complete muffler or silencer device,” “privately made firearm,” and “readily.” The new definitions make it possible for firearms to have more than one “frame or receiver.” A conclusion that is both at odds with the controlling federal statute and could disrupt the entire industry.
The truth is that Congress handed over its responsibility to make numerous gun laws to the ATF ages ago. As a result, the ATF gets to essentially set federal law.
Evidence of this can be seen with bump stocks.
While lawmakers were considering legislation, the ATF ultimately decided to ban bump stocks. This was not the result of federal law or congressional action. In fact, the agency went beyond the text of the law in deciding that such stocks constituted machine guns.
To claim they don’t make law and only enforce it flies in the face of recent history.
“Myth: ATF has a national gun registry.
Fact: False: ATF is strictly prohibited by law from having a national gun registry.”ATF is prohibited by federal law from maintaining a gun registry. However, that’s not the whole story.
Federal law requires those who purchase a firearm at a gun dealer (Federal Firearms Licensee or FFL) to fill out a form 4473. This record of the firearm transfer is then stored by the dealer on their premises. This creates a system whereby if a gun is found at a crime scene, ATF can trace the firearm to the last retail purchase. However, since the records are stored with each FFL, the system is decentralized in a manner that protects against government abuse of gun owner data.
Gun dealers are required to maintain 4473s for 20 years. When a dealer goes out of business, they must send their last 20 years of records to ATF’s National Tracing Center to facilitate firearm traces.
Look, go read the whole thing. However, it’s rich for the ATF to try and sell this nonsense after what they pulled recently in Delaware. That involved information that the ATF shouldn’t actually have.
It also suggests that while there may be no formal registry, there’s enough of an informal framework there for the effects to be the same.
Now, I get the ATF trying to soften their image among gun owners and the pro-Second Amendment crowd. After all, they’re in charge of enforcing gun laws and the people they most likely deal with are going to be armed. The last thing they want is for the default reaction to be hostility.
But Chief, this ain’t it.
Had the ATF done something different, they might have gotten what they wanted. Instead, this just smells like BS and no one is buying it.
Frankly, rather than helping their image, it just cements it as an underhanded federal agency of jackbooted thugs looking for an opportunity to go door to door looking to take our guns.
“How to Spot a Groomer With This 1 Weird Trick”
The Clinical Steps To Grooming Kids Match Exactly How They’re Being Taught In Schools
The steps predators take to groom children for sexual abuse bear a remarkable resemblance to some modern lesson plans in American elementary schools, according to descriptions clinical experts provided to the Daily Caller.
Proponents of introducing Critical Gender Theory curricula and graphic sexual education to young children in schools have rejected the “groomer” pejorative critics recently began lobbing at them. Still, the grooming methods that experts outlined for the Caller bear a striking resemblance to some of the newer sexual education lessons the fringe political left is pushing into classrooms.
The most common tactics groomers employ are cultivating a positive reputation within a community, introducing sexualized topics or imagery to kids, isolating them from their parents, and encouraging them to keep secrets, experts told the Daily Caller. Each of these red flags have manifested themselves in classroom policies or public programs for children across America in recent years.
“I can’t think of too many times where I would think that an unrelated person should say, ‘Don’t say this to your parents,’” Daniel Pollack, professor at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University, told the Daily Caller.
“[Parents] should be informed [about sex education], especially the younger kids are,” Chris Newlin, executive director of the National Children’s Advocacy Center, said. “I’m just not a fan of things being held secret from parents, and kids being told not to tell.”
Yet a culture of secrets is exactly what’s cropping up in some schools. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that a school could institute a policy in which kids change their gender identity without informing parents. In March, a Texas elementary school told 5-year-old kids not to tell their parents what adults taught during pride week classroom discussions. A new Philadelphia policy requires teachers to hide the transgender status of students from parents.
Examples are international, too: in Canada, one school hosted a “pride dance” that parents were prohibited from seeing.
The dictionary definition of groomer is “the criminal activity of becoming friends with a child in order to try to persuade the child to have a sexual relationship,” according to the Cambridge English Dictionary. Some critics of sexualized education for kids and programs like Drag Queen Story Hour allege that kids aren’t only being groomed for potential abuse, but are being mentally groomed into a particular worldview regarding sexuality and gender.
BLUF
A little over 2400 rounds before it quits.
Ruger Security 9 Endurance Test, by Pat Cascio
Back in February 2018, I tested the then fairly-new polymer-frame Ruger Security 9 handgun. It was a stellar pistol, and very affordable, as well. I liked that gun so much that I added a second one to my modest collection. The first one resides in our bedroom, it is my “nightstand” gun – even though it isn’t stored in a nightstand. My second Security 9 has a trigger guard mounted laser on it, and that is the only difference between the two guns.
Look, we all know that, anything can be broken, under the right circumstance, and I stopped doing “to destruction” testing on just about everything I test. I’ve had more than a few firearms almost self-destruct without doing that type of testing. On the Ruger Security 9, I just wanted to put an obscene number of rounds through it, before it stopped working. Needless to say, no easy task, since we are still in the worst ammo drought in history. The nice folks at Black Hills Ammunition supplied me with a lot of the ammo used in this testing. I also purchased a lot of 9mm ammo out of my own funds, and quite a bit was donated to me – my local FFL often gets ammo in a gun trade – usually partially full boxes, and sometimes they get ammo in plastic bags – they’ve donated quite a bit of ammo to me over the years.
As stated, I wasn’t about to do an article or test to see if I could destroy the little Ruger Security 9, I just wanted to run a lot of ammo through the gun, without cleaning it or lubing it, after I first inspected the gun out of the box – at which time, I lubed it with Breakfree CLP and didn’t do any cleaning after that. I was going to terminate my testing, when the Security 9 had a gun-induced malfunction.
New Orleans PD response time is why you need a gun
Major cities tend to favor gun control. People figure they don’t need a gun because they can just call the police. In many cases, that works. After all, larger police departments tend to have the kind of manpower were help can be just a few minutes away.
That doesn’t help if seconds count, but in New Orleans, it seems even if they don’t, you’re still screwed.
It is one of the most startling crime stats to emerge in recent months: It takes New Orleans police an average of 2½ hours to respond to a 9-1-1 call, according to a new analysis presented to the City Council on Wednesday.
That figure, calculated by the data firm AH Datalytics and presented to the council’s criminal justice committee, was determined after looking at response times for all calls — including low-priority incidents, like fender-benders or stolen cars where residents are in little danger.
The New Orleans Police Department immediately took issue with how data analyst Jeff Asher crunched the numbers, asserting that residents should focus instead on the department’s response times for emergencies, which police get to largely within minutes.
Low-priority calls are often placed at the end of long backlogs, driving up the overall average.
The problem is that what can start as a low-priority call can become a high-priority call pretty quickly. And, of course, if you’ve already been marked down as low-priority, no one is coming faster unless you can make yet another call to 9-1-1.
At least some on the city council agree.
City Council members said the situation is a crisis that demands immediate action from City Hall.
“We’re just done with the talk,” said Council President Helena Moreno. “We just have to be really honest and say that potentially, people’s lives could be at stake.”
The problem is that the New Orleans Police Department is having a manpower problem. They simply don’t have enough officers on the job to put them on the streets.
It doesn’t help that funding for law enforcement was cut in 2021 to the tune of $15 million.
Earlier this year, the police union president cited progressive politicians as the reason still more officers are leaving the city, some for lower-paying positions. After all, why work to make arrests when the bad guy is going to just end up back on the streets in no time flat?
All of this brings me to point to this as why gun rights matter.
We cannot trust the police to save us. Even if Uvalde hadn’t happened, this would be a big warning sign that maybe, just maybe, the police won’t instantly respond to your 9-1-1 call, the same call you’re counting on to keep you safe from that bump in the dark.
But if you have a gun, you have the means to protect yourself. It doesn’t matter if it takes the police two and a half hours to finally get to your door because you’ll still be alive to open it for them.
Remember that even in the best of cities, you can only count on the police to get there in time to draw a chalk outline around the body. It’s your gun rights that give you the ability to make sure the body in question isn’t yours. It’s not a difficult decision to make
Using gun database to target negligent firearm makers not so easy, ATF tells NYC Mayor Adams
When New York City Mayor Eric Adams met with Steven Dettelbach, the newly confirmed Director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on July 28, he asked Dettelbach to do something that ATF has never done before — revoke the firearms license of a leading gun manufacturer, Polymer80.
Polymer80 has been called the nation’s largest supplier of untraceable ghost guns. At a news conference in May, NYPD officials said nine out of 10 ghost guns the NYPD seizes are made from Polymer80 kits.
Adams had additional requests: he asked that Dettelbach double the number of ATF agents stationed in New York City, and increase data sharing between NYPD and ATF. In a video provided after their meeting, Adams said Dettelbach “was receptive to these requests, and we will be continuing the conversation in the weeks ahead.”
But Adams’ request to use the ATF database to go after the license of a gun manufacturer would be a major change from the established practice of ATF, an agency that has a dual mandate: It is both a law enforcement agency and the agency responsible for inspecting and licensing gun dealers.
To accomplish their mission, ATF must work cooperatively with not only law enforcement partners, but also gun manufacturers and federal firearms licensees.
Using gun data to go after manufacturers? Probably not
On July 20, Adams met with other big city mayors to discuss the possibility of sharing database information to go after negligent gun makers, saying that five manufacturers — Glock, Taurus, Smith & Wesson, Ruger and Polymer80 — produced more than half of the guns used for crimes in major U.S. cities last year.
The notion of targeting gun manufacturers was also the subject of a hearing held on July 27 by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, chaired by Carolyn Maloney. The committee focused on negligence by manufacturers of AR-15 style rifles.
The five major gun manufacturers collected a total of more than $1 billion dollars from the sale of assault rifles alone over the last decade, Maloney said. Their marketing tactics include “marketing to children, preying on young men’s insecurities, and even appealing to violent white supremacists,” along with arranging easy credit, she said.
But the difficulties of going after the gun makers was made clear at a recent security conference held in New York City, where the special agent in charge of New York’s ATF shot down Adams’ hopes to target gun manufacturers using the shared database.
“It’s unfortunate he made that statement before he was educated by me,” SAC John DeVito told the crowd at the Protecting New York Summit, sponsored by City & State New York on July 21.
“Everybody wants to vilify the gun manufactures,” DeVito said, adding that one of his biggest jobs is “to educate officials, law enforcement partners and prosecutors exactly what this information means and how they can utilize it — and how they shouldn’t utilize it. And I do that on a daily basis.
“Everybody thinks there’s some holy grail with all this data … So Glock’s your number one gun — it could be this year. But it could change next year, it could be Smith & Wesson,” DeVito said. “We do track that information, but at the end of the day, manufacturers are operators in a free market economy. They’re selling an item that is not contraband, it’s not dope. It’s a firearm. Whatever your views are on the Second Amendment, we live in a pro-Second Amendment world in this country.”
Going after the manufactures and dealers because their firearms are being used in crimes “is a fruitless battle … They’re adequately protected in Congress,” DeVito said.
When CNN Quotes Everytown Troublesome Facts Kick In
Over the weekend, CNN reported on gun control laws passed so far in 2022, adding this reference, “There is a direct correlation in states with weaker gun laws and higher rates of gun deaths, including homicides, suicides and accidental killings, according to a January study published by Everytown for Gun Safety, a non-profit focused on gun violence prevention.”
However, an article in the Keene Sentinel, a newspaper serving southwest New Hampshire, reveals a small problem with Everytown’s research that might raise an eyebrow, if not some serious questions. Headlined “New Hampshire paradox: State gun laws remain loose as violence rate remains low,” the story’s lead paragraph tells a different tale.
“National rankings indicate New Hampshire has some of the weakest gun laws in the nation, and yet the state also maintains a low rate of firearm violence,” the newspaper says.
The report also quotes State Senate President Chuck Morse (R-Salem), who told the newspaper’s editorial board recently that gun-related violence is a problem of people, not guns.
“I don’t believe it’s a gun problem because look at New Hampshire.,” Morse reportedly stated. “We have more guns than probably any other state per capita. We have open carry, we passed constitutional carry, and we’re one of the safest states in the nation.”
How Iowa Firearms Coalition Beat County Gun-Banners & Was Paid $100,000.00
The History:
I’d like to share with you a modern-day story of David and Goliath. If I were to mention 1 Samuel 17, the biblically literate among you would know the tale. I highly recommend reading it, as it will make this story richer with context and provenance. Of course, the story of David and Goliath is known far beyond the Judeo-Christian among us. Do you recall it? Goliath represents the mighty and powerful aggressors, while David represents the pure in spirit – someone who believed.
In 1990, the Iowa legislature preempted the regulation of firearms in the state with the enactment of Iowa Code 724.28.
Preemption doctrine refers to the principle that in a given area of law, regulations set by a higher authority will supersede those of a lower authority if the two come into conflict. In this case, political subdivisions of the state (cities, counties, or townships) were prohibited from enacting any regulation of firearms that is more restrictive than state law. For those of you fortunate to have such a preemption law in your state, guard it with your very lives. Otherwise, your state will end up with an unnavigable patchwork of regulatory zones in which local tyrants strip you of your ability to exercise your fundamental rights.
As you might imagine, much like the ranting of our President and the immediate reactions of some state governments in response to the recent decision of the Supreme Court in NYSRPA v. Bruen, many counties and cities in Iowa disobeyed this law. The problem of illegal local gun laws worsened significantly after Iowa switched from a “may issue” to the “shall issue” system of issuing permits to carry weapons, and the number of permit holders skyrocketed. To enforce the statute, the Iowa Legislature clarified and strengthened 724.28 in 2017. Yet – you guessed it – the habitual violators of freedom and liberty continued to break the law. Again in 2020, Iowa’s preemption statute was reinforced by broadening it to include all weapons and by providing standing to sue for those damaged by an illegal local policy. Iowa specifically spelled out the word “carrying” (weapons) in 2021 for the judges and local authorities who were having trouble reading the code. An exception to the law was added in 2020 to allow local restrictions on the carrying and possession of weapons, but only in buildings where actual and adequate screening for weapons was in place and within which armed security personnel was present.
Store clerk in Beaumont shoots suspect who attacked her during robbery
BEAUMONT — A justice of the peace has set bond at $250,000 for a Beaumont man accused of attacking a store clerk during a robbery Friday night.
Beaumont police say the store clerk shot 62-year-old William Coleman after he attacked her at Everest Food Mart in the 2800 block of Eastex Freeway.
Police responded to the store around 11:30 p.m. Friday.
Police say the store clerk called 911 and reported a robbery in progress.
When police arrived, they found the wounded suspect.
Paramedics transported him to the hospital with serious injuries.
Detectives have obtained an aggravated Robbery warrant for Coleman.
Once he is released from the hospital, officers will transport him to the Jefferson County Jail.
The store clerk suffered several minor injuries during the attack.
Justice of the Peace Ben Collins, Sr., set bond at $250,000 for the aggravated robbery charge.
The robbery investigation is ongoing.
Working lower receiver made out of Legos
FYI, this is a LARGE file, I’d suggest you download on your own, for educational purposes only. of course.
Study Finds Vaccinated People Spread COVID for a Longer Period of Time
Researchers published their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine as a letter to the editor and appeared to have tried to downplay the variance.
“…We did not find large differences in the median duration of viral shedding among participants who were unvaccinated, those who were vaccinated but not boosted, and those who were vaccinated and boosted,” they wrote.
However, as the data indicates, the vaccinated were contagious for a longer period than the unvaccinated.
For example, after ten days of getting infected with COVID, only 31% of unvaccinated individuals in the study were still testing positive by PCR test, compared to 70% of vaccinated individuals and 61% of vaccinated plus boosted individuals.
Moreover, five days later, only 6% of unvaccinated participants were still testing positive, compared to 22% and 7.5% of vaccinated and boosted individuals, respectively.
It should be noted the sample size was small, with just 66 subjects in total being involved.
Nonetheless, that’s 66 more people than the government-funded study we wrote about in March, wherein researcher Fisman used ‘modelling’ (not real-data)to allow him to ‘find’ the conclusions he wanted.
Oklahoma Pushes Back Against School Districts That Violated Ban on Critical Race Theory
After two Oklahoma school districts violated the state’s ban on teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT), the state took action to punish them.
In response to both Tulsa Public Schools and Mustang Public Schools violating HB 1775, which “protects our children across the state from being taught revisionist history and that ‘one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex,’ or that ‘an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously,” the Oklahoma State Board of Education voted to give the schools an “accreditation with warning,” which is the third of a five-step process.
The warning will require the two districts to show that they have made the changes needed to meet the board’s standards.
The board decided to go a step higher than what HB 1775 recommends, which is disciplinary action for violators of “accreditation with deficiencies,” which is the second step.
According to Townhall, the incident was first revealed when the board found out that the school districts held a training course for teachers including lessons on how “to shame white people for past offenses in history.”
In addition, Tulsa Public Schools was recently found to have made two books with explicit content available to students in middle school.
Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. — JOHN BRADSHAW
Woo! Woo! Woo! He shot my arm off! He shot my arm off! Waahhh.
Caught on video: Norco store owner blasts armed robber with shotgun; 3 arrested
A would-be robber was critically injured after being shot by a store owner in Norco early Sunday in a dramatic incident that was captured on surveillance video.
An employee who reached out to KTLA said the video shows a man armed with an assault-style rifle walk into the Norco Market at 816 Sixth Street around 2:45 a.m., point the weapon at the owner, and order him to put his “hands in the air.”
Within just a few seconds, the owner steps behind a glass display and fires a shotgun at the suspect, who immediately runs out of the store screaming and shouting, “He shot my arm off!”
Officials later indicated that three men entered the store armed with long guns and wearing facial coverings and hoods.
A second camera in the parking lot shows the suspect jump into a dark-colored BMW SUV with at least three accomplices and then drive away.
Four suspects were later found at a hospital. One of the men “was suffering from a gunshot wound consistent with a shotgun blast,” according to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. The 23-year-old remains hospitalized in critical but stable condition and will be booked into jail after being released, officials said.
The suspect vehicle, which had been reported stolen, was also found at the hospital. Inside the dark-colored BMW SUV authorities found numerous stolen firearms.
Three suspects were taken into custody in the hospital parking lot and were booked for robbery and conspiracy. They are being held on $500,000 bail.
The men were identified as Justin Johnson, 22, of, Inglewood, Jamar Williams, 27, of Los Angeles and Davon Broadus, 24, of Las Vegas.
“In this case, a lawfully armed member of our community prevented a violent crime and ensured their own safety, while being confronted with multiple armed suspects,” the Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.
The employee told KTLA the store owner called 911 and was later transported to a hospital with a possible heart condition, although he is expected to be OK.
The shooting remains under investigation.
You can expect more of this with an administration headed by a feeble, senile dolt, and an airhead. Even the droning al Zawahiri means little to other sects of moslems bent on jihad.
IRANIAN IMPUNITY IN THE U.S.?
Man Arrested with AK-47 Outside Brooklyn Home of Iranian Dissident.
On Thursday, a 23-year-old man named Khalid Mehdiyev was arrested in Brooklyn outside the home of Masih Alinejad. She is the astonishingly courageous Iranian dissident who so enrages the mullahs who lead the Islamic Republic that they mounted an audacious plot last year to kidnap her in New York and take her back to Iran, where she would have faced unimaginable horrors. Was this a second attempt by the Iranians to rid themselves of one of their highest-profile and most trenchant critics? If so, it highlights yet again Old Joe Biden’s appalling weakness. Weakness, after all, invites aggression.
When cops searched his car, they found, apparently along with two days’ worth of takeout cartons, “the loaded AK-47 with multiple magazines, additional rounds of ammunition and a suitcase full of cash. Two other different license plates were also found.”
But Mehdiyev insists that his odd and suspicious behavior was entirely innocent: he “told police he had been staying in Yonkers, but the rent was too high there and he was looking for a new place to live in the Brooklyn neighborhood. He said he had tried to open the front door of the residence so he could knock on an inside door to ask if he could rent a room.” He apparently didn’t explain why he sat outside the place for two days, and he had no plausible explanation for anything else, either: “He initially told officers he had borrowed the car and he didn’t know anything about the gun and said the suitcase was not his.” Yeah, you know how AK-47s can just appear in your car without your knowledge or consent, and what can anyone do about that?
Later, apparently realizing how ridiculous his initial story sounded, Mehdiyev “confessed that the gun was his and he had been in Brooklyn ‘because he was looking for someone’” — an ominous statement when you’re carrying an AK during your search.
Masih Alinejad is a particular thorn in the side of the mullahs because she highlights on a daily basis the pettiness and cruelty of the Islamic Republic. She routinely posts videos that have been sent to her (at tremendous risk) from inside Iran, showing Iranian women risking multiyear prison sentences for the crime of taking off their hijab, the arrest and torture of women who have done so, and the Iranian regime’s determination to punish women who dare to resist their oppression. On Wednesday, she posted a video showing the “unspeakable cruelty” of the Iranian regime in killing over 1,700 stray dogs. (Dogs are considered unclean in Islam, and Muhammad, the Islamic prophet, ordered that they be killed.)
In a shame/honor culture, Masih Alinejad is doing something that the Iranian mullahs likely consider worse than death: she is humiliating them. And so it wouldn’t be in the least surprising if it turns out that they sent Khalid Mehdiyev, as they sent the kidnappers who were foiled last year.
Old Joe Biden presents such an image of fecklessness and lack of control that it’s easy to see why the mullahs would think that this is the perfect time to strike within the United States: if Masih Alinejad were ever abducted or killed, Joe will stumble and mumble through some paper-tiger statement and continue his indefatigable pursuit of a new Iranian nuclear deal. So for the mullahs, there is no downside to continuing to try to get her in their clutches. The only people who would pay a price, as always with Joe’s actions and inactions, are the free people of the world.
Andrew Klavan:
What I like about Kamala Harris is that every time she opens her mouth, she reveals the level of intellect required to believe in leftist ideas. Impressive!
She really needs to be a motivational speaker pic.twitter.com/gq27wZWJFD
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) August 1, 2022
Matt Walsh:
The idea that congress can pass legislation that would stop the rain from falling is absolute insane nonsense and should be mocked as such. She might as well break out into a rain dance live on stage. Pure paganism.
.@VP Harris suggests recent deaths during flooding in Missouri and Kentucky could have been prevented if Congress were spending more trying to stop the climate from changing pic.twitter.com/xFUOmKDdbj
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) August 1, 2022
Like his former boss, Obammy, all of Joe Biden’s promises come with an expiration date.
Biden then:
Biden now:
Undermining Taliban narrative, US kills al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri in Kabul
The Washington Examiner can confirm that a U.S. drone strike over the weekend killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri in Kabul, Afghanistan. The news of al Zawahiri’s death was originally reported by the Associated Press. President Joe Biden will announce the news from the White House on Monday evening.
Al Zawahiri’s location was likely identified as he prepared to meet with Taliban officials. A formative member of al Qaeda, al Zawahiri succeeded Osama bin Laden on the latter’s death in May 2011. With long-standing roots in the Salafi-Jihadist movement, Zawahiri cut his teeth in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Lacking bin Laden’s personal charisma, he nevertheless remained a respected and capable commander. His ability to evade a persistent, nearly three-decade U.S. effort to locate him testified to his operational skill.
Yet even as this is a significant victory for the Biden administration, the circumstances of al Zawahiri’s death are ironically problematic for the administration.
After all, al Zawahiri was killed in Kabul, right in the citadel of Taliban power. Sources tell me that this is far from coincidental. In recent months, al Qaeda leaders have taken increasing steps to reconstitute their official interactions with the Taliban. Al Zawahiri was almost certainly in Kabul to further that interest. This obviously represents a clear breach of the Taliban’s commitment, via the Trump administration-Taliban peace accord, that it would disavow relations with al Qaeda in return for the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan. The nature of al Zawahiri’s death evinces how the Taliban remain al Qaeda’s active ally. The tentacles of ideology and ambition are once again coalescing. It is highly unlikely that al Zawahiri’s death will lead to the Taliban’s reconsideration of this relationship. Still, this is embarrassing for Taliban in the same way that bin Laden’s Pakistani residence was embarrassing for Islamabad: It reeks of duplicity.
Biden may address that duplicity in his speech. But a familiar problem remains: So-called over-the-horizon counterterrorism operations are far more complicated when said counterterrorism forces have a limited footprint from which to gather intelligence on the ground. While the United States will remain able to target individual terrorists successfully when and where they are found, many more will remain undiscovered. The decision by former President Donald Trump and Biden to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan will thus remain a controversial one.