Ryan J. Reilly November 7, 2011, 1:56 PM

Just how dedicated does the National Rifle Association think the Obama administration is to destroying the Second Amendment? The director of the organization thinks that DOJ gave weapons to Mexican drug cartels during Operation Fast and Furious in an effort to churn up support for changing gun laws.

National Rifle Association Director Wayne LaPierre — who has also suggested that the fact that Obama has not cracked down on guns is just part of a long term scheme to actually crack down on guns — has been recently floating the conspiracy theory that Fast and Furious was a way to impose stricter guns laws.

“It’s the only thing that makes any sense,” LaPierre told Newsmax. “Over a period of two or three years they were running thousands and thousands of guns to the most evil people on earth. At the same time they were yelling ‘90 per cent… of the guns the Mexican drug cartels are using come from the United States.’”

As Attorney General Eric Holder prepares to be grilled by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday morning, the NRA is running an advertisement calling for his resignation. But the ad plays pretty fast with the facts.

The NRA ad states that “internal memos, addressed directly to Holder in the preceding months, made clear Holder’s department was pushing Operation Fast and Furious, firearms supplied to Mexican drug trafficking cartels.”

Actually, the memo in question states that the head of the gun-trafficking ring, Manuel Celis-Acosta, “and [redacted] straw purchasers are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug trafficking cartels.”

The memo in question doesn’t include any discussion of the actual tactics used during operation Fast and Furious, like those included in a memo former Bush-era Attorney General Michael Mukasey received back in 2007. That memo stated that “controlled delivery have not been successful, the investigation is ongoing, and ATF would like to expand the possibility of such joint investigations and controlled deliveries — since only then will it be possible to investigate an entire smuggling network, rather than simply arresting simply a single smuggler.”

So far, evidence has established that Assistant Attorney General Lanny Bruer and his deputy knew about the Bush-era tactics in 2010, but there’s no evidence they knew about the gun walking allegations surrounding Fast and Furious until whistleblowers went public in early 2011. Breuer has apologized for not connecting the “gun walking” tactics used in the Bush-era Operation Wide Receiver when the allegations about Fast and Furious emerged.

Here’s the NRA’s ad:

ATF, DOJ, Eric Holder, Fast And Furious, Justice Department, Lanny Breuer, NRA, National Rifle Association