Posted on 05/19/2011 5:22:28 AM PDT by marktwain
BELLEVUE, Wash.--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--After Senator Joseph Lieberman released contents of his letter to Attorney General Eric Holder supporting a proposed long gun sales reporting requirement in southwest states, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today urged Lieberman to instead support an on-going investigation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ botched Project Gunrunner.
“It is not the southwest firearms dealers who need investigating, Senator, but the ATF”
In a letter to Sen. Lieberman, CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb reminded him that press reports and documents relating to Gunrunner indicate that the ATF “abetted the movement of firearms into the illicit gun market, and ultimately to drug cartels in Mexico.” Gottlieb also expressed his surprise that Lieberman’s letter to Holder did not mention either Gunrunner or Operation Fast-and-Furious, a project handled by the Phoenix ATF field office. Both of those efforts are believed to have let thousands of guns to be “walked” into the hands of Mexican criminals.
“I am astonished that you now support a strategy that places firearms dealers and their customers under additional scrutiny of an agency that may very well be largely responsible for creating a problem you now expect it to resolve,” Gottlieb wrote. “The agency to which you now advocate giving more power over firearms transactions in southwest states was responsible for allowing criminal suspects to complete multiple purchases of so-called ‘assault rifles,’ despite the concerns of those licensed dealers you would have ATF micro-manage, and over the objections of its own field agents.”
Gottlieb reminds the senator that ATF has recently shuffled its entire Phoenix management team, moving the two top agents who oversaw Fast-and-Furious to ATF headquarters in Washington, D.C., where one is now cooperating with investigations launched by Sen. Charles Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa.
“It is not the southwest firearms dealers who need investigating, Senator, but the ATF,” he said. “It is not those gun dealers who should be held accountable for the flood of illicit firearms into Mexico, but the ATF officials who not only allowed it to happen, but encouraged it.
“Instead of supporting this new reporting strategy, I urge you to instead exercise your considerable influence to support Senator Grassley’s investigation of the Gunrunner controversy,” Gottlieb concluded.
With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.
Comrade 0bama cannot have even a hint of scandal in his run to destroy America
BTTT.
Agree. This organization has been a loose cannon going back at least to the Branch Davidian and Ruby Ridge massacres. Disband them and move their oversight responsibilities to the FBI, sans any previous ATF personnel. Let’em go to work for BlackWater over in the Middle East or Africa. They'll get all the action they want over there....
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2623044/posts
All we need are some Congress people who can find the courage to do this. THIS IS DOABLE!!!!
If not now, when? If ever there were a rogue agency that needed to be SERIOUSLY scaled back, this is it.
Why would LIEberman want to go after the ATF? Operation Gunwalker was designed from the beginning to create propaganda to be used to disarm American citizens and this is an outcome LIEberman wants to happen.
“Gottlieb reminds the senator that ATF has recently shuffled its entire Phoenix management team, moving the two top agents who oversaw Fast-and-Furious to ATF headquarters in Washington, D.C., where one is now cooperating with investigations launched by Sen. Charles Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa.”
I bet those two top agents are getting promoted!
When a federal agency recklessly, willfully and with forethought breaks federal laws, the entire system is broken and cannot be trusted. How much more of this do we need to see and hear before we decide to scrap it? ATF sells tens of thousands of guns to criminals. SEC fails to investigate wholesale fraud in the markets and allows a trillion dollar financial collapse to occur. $2 million dollar lottery winner collects food stamps. Social security will break us. And on and on and on.
These issues and more should be the focus of the 2012 campaign. I expect Ron Paul to hammer these issues. On top of all this incompetence, we want to create more agencies to oversee even more aspects of our lives such as health care? We are masochists to do this to ourselves... It has to be rolled back.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.