Free Republic

Full title: Confirmed: Obama DOJ Failure to Arrest Known Straw Purchasers Led to Murder of ICE Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico According to a new inspector general report an illegal gun trafficking program similar to Operation Fast and Furious, which took place under President Obama's Department of Justice, led to the murder of ICE Agent Jaime Zapata in 2011. First, the background: On February 15, 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents Victor Avila and Jaime Zapata were returning to Mexico City from Matehuala, Mexico when their armored SUV came under attack near the town of Santa Maria del Rio,...

The secret account is at the center of a federal racketeering lawsuit brought on by a collective of tobacco farmers who say they were cheated out of $24 million.

Arizona – -(Ammoland.com)-A “white paper“, written by the second highest ranking official of the ATF, has been obtained by the Washington Post. The date, official, and reforms mentioned, are all significant.  The paper was dated January 20th, 2017,  inauguration day.Ronald B. Turk is the author. The paper expresses “the ideas and opinions” of Mr. Turk. From the washingtonpost.com: The second-highest-ranking official at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has written a proposal to reduce gun regulations, including examining a possible end to the ban on importing assault weapons into the United States. The “white paper” by Ronald B....

In past years, the SHOT Show—the Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade Show, organized annually by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, held this year in Las Vegas—has been marked by delight at the booming firearms market, clouded by concerns about impending executive actions by now-former President Barack Obama. This year, SHOT was the exact opposite: hopes for regulatory relief from President Donald Trump, tempered with regret at the end of—or at least a pause in—the remarkable sales run of the past eight years. For say what you will about Obama—and SHOT Show attendees often do—he drove firearms sales better than anyone...

In re-introducing the ATF Elimination Act on Thursday, January 12, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) explained one of the primary reasons why: “The ATF is a scandal-ridden, largely duplicative agency that has been branded by failure and lacks a clear mission. It is plagued by backlogs, funding gaps, hiring challenges, and a lack of leadership.”Not once did he explain the real reason the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF for short) should be eliminated: There is no provision anywhere in the Constitution that grants the federal government the powers the ATF exercises.Sensenbrenner’s original bill was introduced on March 4,...

A bill has been proposed in U.S. House of Representatives that would eliminate the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The ATF Elimination Act, which was reintroduced by Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner on Thursday, calls for an ATF hiring freeze and would transfer the ATF’s current responsibilities to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration. According to the bill, the FBI and DEA would need to submit a plan for scaling down ATF affairs within 180 days of the bill’s enactment into law. Within one year, the FBI would have to issue a report to...

In just 10 days a new administration takes over the executive branch of government. Among the agencies to be taken over will be the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATF). Will the infamous Operation & Furious documents be available to the newcomers or has the current BATF already destroyed those files? Ditto for the Department of Justice.

In what will hopefully be one of the final acts of the Obama Administration on firearms, the ATF on Monday announced that its proposed changes to the Form 4473 would go into effect on January 16, 2017, just four days before the inauguration of President-Elect Donald Trump. Form 4473 is the federally mandated form that must be filled out by any person who acquires a firearm from a licensed dealer.... Another notable change to the form is the inclusion of a bolded warning to potential transferees from ATF. The warning provides that “the use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful...

North Carolina Republicans affected by the firebombing of their campaign office are speaking out, accusing the Obama administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) of covering up the political motivations behind the attack. On October 15, a firebomb was thrown through a window of the Republican Party office in Orange County, North Carolina, destroying property but killing no one as the office was empty overnight.

Gun shows. The officials in the meeting suspect that a lot of guns that reach Mexico come from American gun shows. The Ambassador from Mexico is cited as believing that shows were the main source of firearms coming into his country. The ATF then says that investigating gun shows is “touchy.” Cross-referencing. Despite the sensitivity, the ATF hoped to be able to identify vehicles that visited gun shows and then crossed the border. The notes read, “[Mr. 192] noted that they would do the check once they came into Mexico. Mr. 009 stated part of the new ways that are...

U.S. Gun-Show Customers’ License Plates Come Under Scrutiny Federal agents enlisted local police to scan cars’ plates at shows’ parking lots By Devlin Barrett Oct. 2, 2016 7:35 p.m. ET Federal agents have persuaded police officers to scan license plates to gather information about gun-show customers, government emails show, raising questions about how officials monitor constitutionally protected activity. Emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show agents with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency crafted a plan in 2010 to use license-plate readers—devices that record the plate numbers of all passing cars—at gun shows in Southern California, including one in...

Federal agents lacked proper guidance and experience while conducting undercover sting operations in Milwaukee and several other cities that were aimed at disrupting illegal gun sales, according to a U.S. Justice Department report released Thursday. ..... Pensacola agents didn't place a team outside the store to help with potential emergencies and had no plans for dealing with people who couldn't legally possess guns but who left the store armed. The store also was burglarized once; the report said agents didn't install an alarm. In St. Louis, agents set up their storefront 600 feet from a Boys and Girls Club. Most...

In June of 2016, the ATF announced that nitrocellulose, including nitrocellulose wetted with water or alcohol, would be considered a high explosive.  This change in regulation was simply announced in the June ATF EXPLOSIVES Industry Newsletter, without a comment period or any previous consideration.This change had a potentially devastating effect on ammunition manufacturers and manufacturers of smokeless gunpowder.  If the ruling was upheld, it would have required enormous changes in gunpowder manufacture, making ammunition significantly more expensive, and likely halting the manufacture of smokeless gunpowder for a considerable period while changes to existing procedures were worked out, tested, and...

Fellow Conservative, This is not a drill. The Obama administration just implemented a new regulatory change that has sent the entire firearms industry into a tailspin overnight. A key ingredient necessary for making gunpowder has been re-classified as a high explosive, making it illegal for any company within the industry to transport or store it as they have for decades. It all stems from how the ATF regulates a chemical compound known as nitrocellulose. For decades, the firearm industry has been allowed to store and transport wetted nitrocellulose without having to treat it as a high explosive. Manufacturers deliberately mix...

Washington, DC -(AmmoLand.com)- In an Explosives Industry Newsletter issued in June 2016, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (“ATF”) reclassified wetted nitrocellulose containing greater than 12.6 percent nitrogen as a high explosive under the federal explosives laws.

Randall and Vicki Weaver and their children wanted nothing more than to be left to live an isolated life in peace in their cabin enclave on a northern Idaho mountain top called Ruby Ridge. Untrusting of the federal government and of the belief society had taken an insurmountable turn for the worse, the Weavers — as many residents in the remote and breathtaking area — taught their children to be self-sufficient and defend themselves with firearms from unwanted intrusions onto the family’s property. But the Weaver’s seemingly idyllic life came to an appallingly violent end over several hours from August...

The Federal Government spends a billion dollars a year on on federal gun laws.  Most of that money is for enforcement of federal gun laws, but some of it is to push state and local governments toward infringing on the Second Amendment. From FY 2015 Budget Fact Sheets U.S DOJ(pdf): In 2013, the Administration proposed a range of legislative remedies – along with 23 executive actions – to address mass shootings and reduce gun violence. The Justice Department is working to implement a number of these actions and requests a total of $1.1 billion in FY 2015 to address...

An ATF spokesman who was intimately involved in the Fast and Furious cover up has been promoting a national gun registry on CBS.  On Sunday, 31 July, Deputy Director Thomas E. Brandon appeared on Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood. Brandon was the ATF official who oversaw the discipline or more accurately the lack thereof, in the Fast and Furious operation. His role has been detailed in the americanthinker.com: According to outgoing Director Jones's sworn testimony of April 2, 2014 before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Mr. Brandon was the person who determined disciplinary punishments for all of...

Patriotic and resolute until the very end, Sipsey Street Irregulars' Mike Vanderboegh died on Wednesday, August 10, 2016 at the age of 64. He wrote this back in January: I beat the odds of my first cancer diagnosis for five years through the grace of God, who evidently wasn't done with me yet. In those five years, we broke the Fast and Furious scandal story ... and generally became a thorn in the side of the empire[.] In December 2010, the Obama-controlled media complex desperately wanted to ignore an illegal government-sponsored gun-walking operation known as Fast and Furious. And it...

A government report discovered the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) illegally stockpiles gun owners’ personal information. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the go-to federal oversight agency, conducted an audit of ATF and found it does not remove certain identifiable information, despite the law explicitly mandating it do so. GAO conducted reviews for four data systems, and concluded at least two of ATF’s systems violated official protocols.