Dogman
14th July 2011, 07:54 AM
In the end she is asking for more gun control, but still interesting in viewpoint.
By MARY SANCHEZ
The Kansas City Star
Every kid who’s ever played cops and robbers knows that the good guys try to keep guns away from the bad guys.
The last thing you would do is sit around and watch crooks sell one another weapons, let them walk off with hundreds of AK-47s, sniper rifles and revolvers, then sit back and wait for the carnage.
But that’s what Justice Department and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives leaders did in a harebrained ploy to get close to Mexico’s drug cartels.
The plan, dubbed “Operation Fast and Furious,” was really Foolish and Fatal.
In 14 months, agents in Phoenix tracked more than 1,700 gun sales, mostly by “straw” buyers — buyers procuring them for criminals. The goal was to see where the guns turned up, in an attempt to bust drug kingpins.
Several ATF agents complained bitterly, frustrated at being stopped from making busts and seizing weapons destined for cartel gunmen. Told to dismiss their training and sense of humanity, they watched guns sold to straw buyers and let the traffickers “walk.” All in the interest of catching bigger fish.
One ATF agent testified: I cannot see anyone who has one iota of concern for human life being OK with this.”
Another charged, “It’s like they grabbed the ATF rulebook and threw it out the window.”
They dreaded the inevitable.
When U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot and six others killed by a gunman in Tucson, Ariz., Phoenix agents braced. They feared the gun would be one they had let walk.
Tragedy occurred in December 2010. U.S. border agents pursued armed criminals thought to be preying on undocumented immigrants crossing the border. In a shootout, agent Brian A. Terry was murdered. Two AK-47s were found by the 40-year-old ex-Marine’s body in the Arizona desert. Serial numbers showed the guns came from Phoenix, had been tracked by ATF agents.
Only with Terry’s murder did the heated concerns of ATF agents find any traction. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Darrell Issa of California, both Republicans, issued a report charging Operation Fast and Furious: “contributed to the increasing violence and deaths in Mexico.” The plan was “regarded with giddy optimism by ATF supervis
The government says neither weapon found at the scene fired the fatal shot. But they don’t believe they have the gunman who did either, as one suspect remains at large.
Some say toppling a kingpin would have made “Fast and Furious” easier to stomach. Tell that to Terry’s grieving family. And that’s not what happened.
A mere 20 straw buyers have been indicted for lying on forms they filled out to buy the guns. With the vast majority of those charged, ATF agents knew about their dealings before the operation began. Agents argue that other, less deadly methods like the use of informants could have been used.
Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, began hearings on the ATF operation this month. It is worth asking whether ATF officials are following best practices in Project Gunrunner operations — indeed, whether they would have been so eager to press on with them if it wasn’t mostly Mexicans who were dying from the trafficked guns.
But it is also imperative to ask whether Issa’s and Grassley’s inquisitions aren’t motivated — or at least tainted — by politics. Issa began his hearings by warning that no testimony would be admitted that commented on gun control laws or legislation. That’s a tell.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat on the committee, countered that “no legitimate examination of this issue will be complete without analyzing our nation’s gun laws, which allow tens of thousands of assault weapons to flood into Mexico from the United States every year, including .50-caliber sniper rifles, multiple AK variants, and scores of others.”
How much you want to bet that’s a thread that won’t be allowed to unravel in this or any hearing in the near future?
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/06/20/2963209/guns-and-bad-guys-always-end-in.html#ixzz1S5jaIpMb
By MARY SANCHEZ
The Kansas City Star
Every kid who’s ever played cops and robbers knows that the good guys try to keep guns away from the bad guys.
The last thing you would do is sit around and watch crooks sell one another weapons, let them walk off with hundreds of AK-47s, sniper rifles and revolvers, then sit back and wait for the carnage.
But that’s what Justice Department and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives leaders did in a harebrained ploy to get close to Mexico’s drug cartels.
The plan, dubbed “Operation Fast and Furious,” was really Foolish and Fatal.
In 14 months, agents in Phoenix tracked more than 1,700 gun sales, mostly by “straw” buyers — buyers procuring them for criminals. The goal was to see where the guns turned up, in an attempt to bust drug kingpins.
Several ATF agents complained bitterly, frustrated at being stopped from making busts and seizing weapons destined for cartel gunmen. Told to dismiss their training and sense of humanity, they watched guns sold to straw buyers and let the traffickers “walk.” All in the interest of catching bigger fish.
One ATF agent testified: I cannot see anyone who has one iota of concern for human life being OK with this.”
Another charged, “It’s like they grabbed the ATF rulebook and threw it out the window.”
They dreaded the inevitable.
When U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot and six others killed by a gunman in Tucson, Ariz., Phoenix agents braced. They feared the gun would be one they had let walk.
Tragedy occurred in December 2010. U.S. border agents pursued armed criminals thought to be preying on undocumented immigrants crossing the border. In a shootout, agent Brian A. Terry was murdered. Two AK-47s were found by the 40-year-old ex-Marine’s body in the Arizona desert. Serial numbers showed the guns came from Phoenix, had been tracked by ATF agents.
Only with Terry’s murder did the heated concerns of ATF agents find any traction. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Darrell Issa of California, both Republicans, issued a report charging Operation Fast and Furious: “contributed to the increasing violence and deaths in Mexico.” The plan was “regarded with giddy optimism by ATF supervis
The government says neither weapon found at the scene fired the fatal shot. But they don’t believe they have the gunman who did either, as one suspect remains at large.
Some say toppling a kingpin would have made “Fast and Furious” easier to stomach. Tell that to Terry’s grieving family. And that’s not what happened.
A mere 20 straw buyers have been indicted for lying on forms they filled out to buy the guns. With the vast majority of those charged, ATF agents knew about their dealings before the operation began. Agents argue that other, less deadly methods like the use of informants could have been used.
Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, began hearings on the ATF operation this month. It is worth asking whether ATF officials are following best practices in Project Gunrunner operations — indeed, whether they would have been so eager to press on with them if it wasn’t mostly Mexicans who were dying from the trafficked guns.
But it is also imperative to ask whether Issa’s and Grassley’s inquisitions aren’t motivated — or at least tainted — by politics. Issa began his hearings by warning that no testimony would be admitted that commented on gun control laws or legislation. That’s a tell.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat on the committee, countered that “no legitimate examination of this issue will be complete without analyzing our nation’s gun laws, which allow tens of thousands of assault weapons to flood into Mexico from the United States every year, including .50-caliber sniper rifles, multiple AK variants, and scores of others.”
How much you want to bet that’s a thread that won’t be allowed to unravel in this or any hearing in the near future?
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/06/20/2963209/guns-and-bad-guys-always-end-in.html#ixzz1S5jaIpMb