Posted on 07/14/2011 2:41:15 PM PDT by Kaslin
An internal ATF email seems to support the assertion that Fast and Furious was a PR stunt for gun control.
PJM’s Bob Owens has long speculated that the primary reason for Operation Fast and Furious was to perpetuate the lie that 90 percent of illegal firearms in Mexico were from the United States.
Owens’ assertion was buoyed on Wednesday by internal ATF emails obtained by Townhall.com. One email reads:
Can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same FfL and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks Mark R. Chait Assistant Director Field Operations.
This would seem to be a “smoking gun” for Owens’ assertion that this operation was never about crime and always about an “under the table” effort to institute the gun control Obama knew he could never push through Congress.
Additionally, Obama has just issued an executive order which requires gun dealers in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California to report multiple long gun (rifle or shotgun) purchases to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in order to combat illegal firearms trafficking along the Mexican border.
The National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action fired back at President Obama’s order. Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA-ILA, said they will be filing a lawsuit against the new order the first time ATF tries to enforce it. He noted that criminals generally don’t fill out forms:
$40 billion transnational criminal enterprises don’t fill out paperwork and are not deterred by paperwork violations. This is a blatant effort by the Obama administration and ATF to divert focus of Congress and the general public from their gross incompetence in the Fast and Furious scandal. This scheme will unjustly burden law-abiding retailers in border states. It will not affect drug cartels and it won’t prevent violence along our borders. ATF and the administration lack the statutory authority to do this and the NRA will file suit as soon as ATF sends the first demand letters.
Obama’s order is awash in hypocrisy per the details of the Gunwalker scandal. It was the ATF which ordered gun dealers to make multiple sales of military-style and .50 caliber sniper rifles to known and suspected straw purchasers in the Operation Fast and Furious debacle, in which more than 2,500 weapons were allowed to walk across the border by the ATF. The dealers were already reporting multiple long gun sales and the ATF told them to make the sales anyway.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform who has been investigating the mess form the beginning, said the executive order was about politics:
This political maneuver seems designed to protect the careers of political appointees at the Justice Department and not public safety. It’s disconcerting that Justice Department officials who may have known about or tried to cover-up gunwalking in Operation Fast and Furious are continuing attempts to distract attention from clear wrongdoing. In Operation Fast and Furious, gun dealers didn’t need this regulation as they voluntarily provided ATF agents with information about suspected straw purchasers. In return for this voluntary cooperation, the Justice Department betrayed them by offering false assurances that they would closely monitor sales of weapons that dealers otherwise did not want to make.
Sen. Charles Grassley, (R-IA), ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, was equally outraged by the executive order:
We’ve learned from our investigation of Fast and Furious that reporting multiple long gun sales would do nothing to stop the flow of firearms to known straw purchasers because many Federal Firearms Dealers are already voluntarily reporting suspicious transactions. In fact, in just the documents we’ve obtained, we are aware of 150 multiple long gun sales associated with the ATF’s Fast and Furious case, and despite the fact that nearly all of these sales were reported in real time by cooperating gun dealers, the ATF watched the guns be transported from known straw purchasers to third parties and then let the guns walk away, often across the border. This makes it pretty clear that the problem isn’t lack of burdensome reporting requirements. The administration’s continued overreach with regulations continues, and is a distraction from its reckless policy to allow guns to walk into Mexico.
Two U.S. law enforcement agents are dead because of this operation, and a reported 150 Mexican citizens are as well. Additionally, the guns are now showing up in U.S. crimes.
My answer to that was basically this...
"This was almost purely a propaganda move aimed at creating a distraction and a veneer of responsibility."
At any rate the NRA reports that ...
House Committee Passes Amendment to Defund Illegal Obama Firearm Sales Reporting Requirement.Today, during consideration of the FY 2012 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill, pro-gun U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) offered an amendment to prohibit the use of funds for a new and unauthorized multiple sales reporting plan proposed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The Amendment was passed by a vote of 25-16.
The Rehberg Amendment, which was strongly supported by NRA, will defund the Justice Department’s controversial and illegal move requiring federally licensed firearms retailers in states bordering Mexico to report multiple sales of semi-automatic rifles.
As we reported yesterday, this procedure was proposed last fall as an “emergency" measure by BATFE. Specifically, it calls for all of the firearm retailers in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to report multiple sales, or other dispositions, of two or more .22 caliber or larger semi-automatic rifles capable of accepting a detachable magazine purchased by a single individual in a five consecutive business day period. It is important to note that under existing law, BATFE already has full access to every dealer’s firearm transaction records, either during a bona fide criminal investigation or simply to enforce compliance with record keeping requirements. This new reporting procedure would create a registry of owners of many of today's most popular rifles--firearms owned by millions of Americans for self-defense, hunting and other lawful purposes. Most importantly, however, the BATFE has no legal authority to demand these reports.
In addition, the agency has recently come under intense scrutiny due to its ill-conceived “Fast and Furious” operation. "Fast and Furious" encouraged Arizona gun stores to sell thousands of guns to suspicious buyers, despite objections from dealers and even BATFE’s own field agents.
Earlier this year, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on and passed, by a vote of 277 to 149, an amendment to H.R. 1 (also offered by Rep. Rehberg, along with Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.)) that also would have prohibited the use of federal funds for this reporting requirement. Unfortunately, the amendment was not included in the final version of the bill as a result of Senate inaction.
In March, U.S. Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.) introduced S. 570--“to prohibit the Department of Justice from tracking and cataloguing the purchases of multiple rifles and shotguns." The bill would ensure that federal funds cannot be used for the multiple sales reporting procedure.
NRA will continue to work to make sure the Rehberg Amendment makes it through the appropriations process. The amendment is scheduled to be heard on the House floor in August.
While the Rehberg Amendment is a critically important first step, it is imperative that you contact your U.S. Senators and ask them to cosponsor and support S. 570. You can find contact information for your elected officials by using the "Write Your Representatives" tool at www.NRAILA.org, or you can call your U.S. senators at (202) 224-3121. S. 570 currently has 29 cosponsors. To see if your senators are cosponsors, please click here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:SN00570:@@@P
This alert is posted at: www.nraila.org/Legislation/Read.aspx?ID=6989
Actually I think the figure of 150 refers to 150 Mexican LEOs killed with F&F guns. No numbers on Mexican civilians killed with them.
I don’t really know much about any EOs he has signed other than what was in that NRA report. My focus has been on the Gunwalker scandal lately. 0bama doesn’t seem to care much what Congress does or doesn’t do he just makes up his own rules. He needs to be impeached and removed from office or this mess he’s making may get too big to fix.
Can any other alphabet agency claim as high a body count as this group of petty tyrants?
I'm not sure there was anything intentional about that. Gunrunner is the name of an ATF agency-wide operation but Gunwalker is just a media created name for the scandal of "walking" guns across the border. But yes these new reporting requirements are confusing as to where they came from, what authority they come from and if that's all 0bama is going to do. I keep hearing that he "is going to implement new regulations," future tense, even though it has been reported that the reporting requirements have been put in place.
If he tries to go by EO he'll see in advance the amount of opposition he might face through the actions of Rehberg, Boren, Tester and Burr.
for later reading
Yep. It may have been part of the deal, or they may have done a 'battlefield upgrade' to a select-fire version at the scene.
While the latter is possible, the former seems more likely.
Bump for future reference on Gun Walking and gun control
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