Is Call to Investigate New Black Panthers Doomed from the Start?

Malik Shabazz New Black Panthers
New Black Panthers

USA –-(Ammoland.com)- “As a concerned citizen, I call on you to direct the FBI or other appropriate elements within the Department of Justice to obtain necessary subpoenas and search warrants to begin an investigation immediately,” I wrote yesterday in an open letter to Attorney General Eric Holder regarding a bounty offered by the New Black Panther Party for the kidnapping of George Zimmerman, the reported shooter in the Trayvon Martin killing.

The Panthers’ actions appear to be a clear violation of the federal “Conspiracy Against Rights” statute. And racial tensions are being intentionally inflamed to dangerous levels.

“You have an opportunity to intervene before violence can happen,” I wrote, informing both the Department of Justice and The White House.

To which the Gun Rights Examiner readership weighed in, in column comments and on social media sites where the link was shared, with a not unexpected reaction:  Basically, don’t hold my breath—nothing will come of it. It will be ignored.

These people represent the prevailing sentiment and deserve a response, because they aren’t expressing an unreasonable expectation—it’s actually the one I think most likely. My primary purposes in writing yesterday’s piece were to illustrate hypocrisy in application of the law, as well as to create a record should disaster result from deliberate indifference—kind of like when I asked the House Oversight Committee back in 2009 to look into ATF whistleblower allegations of management corruption and abuse.

The thing is, nobody thought anything would come of “Project Gunwalker” either, back when Mike Vanderboegh of Sipsey Street Irregulars and I were trying to get people to notice it. Check out all the reports we filed back before anyone from Congress or the mainstream media even acknowledged the story.   Go ahead and spend some time on those early links—if you’re new to the story, it’ll be an eye-opener. If you’re not, it’ll be a refresher on what had to happen to get it to break out of an insulated specialty forum/blog container to the wider world.

Throughout, we were told by comment-posting readers that it didn’t matter, nothing would be done. And throughout, we and a few others who would not be dissuaded continued to discover and report new findings and connections.

Should we have listened and given up on the pursuit instead? When?

Should we give up now that we’re up to the point of having subpoenas ignored, the House gathering support for a no-confidence resolution and Rep. Darrell Issa saying he’s gearing up for contempt charges?  Because we’re still being told it doesn’t matter and nothing will be done.

Perhaps not—but did anyone in the early days predict the investigation would get this far? Can anyone state with certainty now how far it will go from here?

Who knows, at this point, where this latest request for an investigation of overt domestic terrorism will end up?  I admit Holder has no real incentive to acknowledge it, let alone act on it. So maybe this small piece can instead be used to add to the evidentiary weight of everything else he must contend with. Maybe…

If we just say “nowhere” and it stays penned up in a modestly-read gun rights column, the pessimistic predictions will create a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think “somewhere” is even a possibility, then why not do something about it?


About David Codrea

David Codrea is a long-time gun rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He is a field editor for GUNS Magazine, and a blogger at The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance. Read more at www.DavidCodrea.com.

David Codrea