Some History Behind ATF “Fast and Furious” Gunwalker Scandal

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has a long history of “walking” guns – mostly to entrap normally law-abiding citizens on technical violations. Our man “Ike” shares a story on the subject, with the following caveat: “My friends are almost all dead now, and I’m sure the statute of limitations has run out. Nevertheless, names and specific information has been left out to protect the innocent (and presumed innocent).” His story as follows . . .

Years ago, just before the 1968 Gun Control Act, there was extensive active (but illicit) trading in machine guns and shoulder-stocked handguns by otherwise law-abiding collectors. It was all victimless crime, with no criminal intent, as none of the guns were being used to shoot anyone. (It was a lot like underage beer drinking. Everybody did it, just don’t get caught.)

The collectors just liked the history and craftsmanship of these relatively rare guns, and bought as many as they could find. Many had been brought back from WWII or Korea by GIs, and were commonly found. A wanted ad in the paper would produce several from vets or their families. At any given gun show, there would be several underneath the tables, and all you had to do was ask around.

In the 1960′s, in Kansas City, several collectors specialized in military weapons of all kinds, and they really liked machine guns – primarily submachine guns. They owned Stens (even the ultra rare German copies of the Stens), MP44s, Schmeissers, MP38s, MP40s, Japanese SMGs, selective fire Mauser pistols, a few WWI MG-08s. Not to mention Artillery Lugers with stock, Broomhandles with stocks, etc.

Anyway, you get the picture: all the great guns that collectors lust after, many of museum quality. Machine guns didn’t have the bad reputation they have today.

ATF didn’t think much of these activities; they decided to put a halt to them. So they ‘borrowed’ a mint-condition, Colt Model 1921 Thompson in an FBI case from the Olathe Naval Air Station in Olathe, Kansas. (I doubt if they told the Navy what they had planned.) Through an ATF informer, they arranged for the Thompson to be sold to one of the local collectors. It was resold more than once. Eventually, it ended up in the advanced collection of a friend of mine, who knew what he had.

This fellow was a student of arms and knew more about guns than anyone I had ever met. He once showed me a copy of “Small Arms of the World” by W.H.B. Smith, and explained to this novice that it was his goal to collect one of each gun in the book. He was well on his way.

I saw the Thompson and handled it at my friend’s home. I was deeply impressed. Colt craftsmanship and finish from the early 1920′s was truly outstanding – and the condition was near new. It even had drum magazines and the special stick magazines for the .45 shot cartridges for riot control. Sweet.

Shortly thereafter, my friend got a phone call from one of the prior owners of the Thompson, who said “They’re coming! Get rid of the Thompson!”

My friend, an educated professional, knew he was in deep trouble. He owned more than 100 collector-quality machine guns and shoulder-stocked collector handguns (illegal at that time). No criminal intent, obviously. He simply liked the guns and couldn’t resist collecting them.

The ATF wasn’t concerned about “criminal intent.” A technical violation was a criminal act and that was that. If the ATF came in with a warrant to search his house, he would be caught with all those unregistered machine guns, lose his professional license and wouldn’t be able to earn a living. Not to mention the distinct possibility of a jail sentence, a criminal record and a lifetime ban on owning firearms of any sort, kind or description.

So, in the dead of night, he and a friend transported the machine guns to a trusted welding shop. Working throughout the night, all the machine guns were welded up into DEWATs (Deactivated War Trophies). They were fully legal and unrestricted at the time—but worth only a few percent of the value of the original guns. That wasn’t the only reason my friends damn near cried as they welded the guns.

As expected, ATF showed-up looking for the Thompson. My friend produced it – all welded up and fully legal. The ATF agents were incensed. Of course they had a pretty good idea what had taken place, but couldn’t prove it. They threatened my friend with prosecution and loss of his professional license. My friend stood his ground (he had a good lawyer). Ultimately, ATF seized the Thompson, and slunk away with their tails between their legs, acting all high and mighty.

Later, we got word that the Navy was highly offended when the ATF returned the Thompson all welded up. Seems the agency didn’t win any friends that day.

Again, the ATF has a long history of “walking” guns. As long as the guns are ‘walked’ into the hands of normally law-abiding citizens who may be committing only technical violations, the consequences are minor. For society, anyway.

When the ATF allows guns to ‘walk’ into the hands of hardened criminals—as we’ve seen in Operation Gunwalker—the consequences are deadly. But the methodology is the same: inefficient, ineffective entrapment without even a passing thought about the consequences of their actions.

OK, you got me on that one. Got link or at least some terms I can search?

Sure thing. We spent quite a bit of time dissecting the evidence in the lead-up to the 1998 re-trial.

Alamo-Girl compiled the info and posted it on her web site. (See: CLINTON'S ROGUE GALLERY)

Did the feds believe illegally manufactured machine guns at Mt. Carmel? The last paragraph below says it all.

National Review 3/20/95 David Kopel "…The application to search the Mount Carmel Center quoted a woman who said her brother claimed he saw a machine-gun conversion kit at a Branch Davidian home in Southern California. Rather than relying on hearsay, BATF should have interviewed the brother to determine what he actually saw. It is highly unlikely that what he saw was a kit to convert a semiautomatic weapon to fully automatic; such kits can be purchased only by a person who undergoes the same rigorous federal licensing process necessary to buy an actual machine gun. …. There was virtually no evidence, that the Branch Davidians had actually converted semiautomatic rifles into machine guns, a complex process that requires several hours of highly skilled- gun-smithing. Perhaps the strongest "evidence" in the warrant application that conversions had occurred was a statement from a neighboring farmer that he had heard machine-gun fire coming from Mount Carmel. But the BATF never told the magistrate that the local sheriff had investigated the neighbor's machine-gun complaint and found it to be erroneous. The sheriff discovered that the machine-gun noise was caused by a legal trigger accessory called a "hellfire device," which makes a firearm sound but does not shoot. The BATF also forgot to tell the magistrate that the complaining farmer was involved in a property dispute with the Davidians…..

National Review 3/20/95 David Kopel "…Although the BATF has no legal authority over child-abuse cases, its search-warrant application dwelled on lurid allegations of abuse, based on an investigation by the state of Texas. The BATF failed to reveal that the investigation had been closed for lack of evidence on April 30, 1992, nearly ten months before the assault on the Mount Carmel Center…….Other irrelevant allegations were also presented in a one-sided manner. The claim by Marc Breault (who had left Mount Carmel in 1989) that Koresh had imprisoned a woman in June 1991 was included in the warrant application, but not the fact that the FBI had investigated the charge in April 1992 and closed the case in June 1992….. The most important source of information in the Waco warrant application came from Marc Breault, who had been Koresh's right-hand man before angrily leaving the group. Breault had defected after Koresh - with an eye on Breault's new wife, Elizabeth - began claiming that all the Davidian women were meant to bear Koresh' s children as Brides of the House of David. A self-described "cult- buster," Breault readily admitted he had a "vendetta" against Koresh, a fact that was not disclosed in the warrant application. The fact that Breault is legally blind was never mentioned to the magistrate. To the contrary, the warrant application gave the impression that Breault had been one of Koresh's soldiers. It said Breault "participated in physical training and firearm shooting exercises conducted by Howell. He stood guard armed with a loaded weapon." Able to see only three inches in front of his face with one eye, and not at all with the other, Breault would probably have been more of a threat to fellow Davidians than to intruders.

Independence Institute Homepage 1996 David Kopel Paul Blackman "…The fall 1993 Treasury Department report on the BATF raid on the Branch Davidians insisted that the investigation of alleged drug use was valid.[46] Treasury reasoned that the sheriff's office had planned to collect the lab equipment but found no record it had done so, "raising the possibility that the illegal equipment might still have been at the Compound."[47] The Treasury Report ignores the fact that Marc Breault (a disaffected ex-Davidian), the source for BATF's information that there had once been a meth lab at Mount Carmel, simultaneously told BATF agent Davy Aguilera that the building in which the meth lab was housed had burned down in Spring 1990.[48] Koresh was thoroughly anti-drug, and it is improbable that he would have started operating a methamphetamine lab after telling the sheriff about its presence.

...Another tactic the federal government used to demonize the Davidians was to accuse them of child abuse. These accusations originally arose from Marc Breault, a former follower of Koresh who had a bitter falling out with him. Breault quit the sect at the end of 1989 and moved to Australia. He then threw himself into a campaign to discredit his former mentor, in the process leading away most of the Australian members of the sect. In March 1990 Breault, his wife and a number of his Australian followers swore out more than 30 pages of affidavits claiming that Koresh was abusing children. A second set of affidavits was sworn out for use in a child custody hearing in early 1992, in which a Michigan man named David Jewell petitioned to gain custody of his daughter, then living at Mt. Carmel with Jewell's ex-wife. However, the allegations were mostly general and lacking in detail Thus the allegations of child abuse sprung from two sources: (1) a man who hated Koresh and was obsessed with discrediting him; and (2) a child-custody dispute. Note that allegations of child abuse are a common tactic in child-custody disputes. As a result of Breault's efforts, local authorities began an investigation of the child abuse charges. Officials of the Child Protective Services division of the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services, and the McLennan County sheriff's office, visited Mt. Carmel in February and March 1992. They found no evidence of child abuse .

House of Representatives Report 104-749 8/2/96 Committee of Government Reform & Oversight "..."The staff also had an opportunity to inspect the physical evidence taken from the ruins of the residence after the fire, much of which had been used in the criminal trial of surviving Davidians. By prior agreement with the Justice Department, a potential witness at the hearings, Failure Analysis Associates, Inc., was to inspect some of the physical evidence in order to respond to tampering allegations. It was believed that the views of scientists from Failure Analysis, who had often performed scientific evaluations for the Federal Government, including the Justice Department and NASA after the Challenger explosion, would be beneficial given public suspicions about the firearms recovered from the site of the Davidian residence. The inspection would not have damaged the weapons and was to have been conducted in the presence of all parties. It was hoped that the inspection would determine whether the Davidians had attempted to alter legal, semi-automatic weapons by converting them into illegal, automatic weapons as the ATF had alleged, and whether any of this evidence had been altered after it was gathered from the destroyed Davidian residence. When the scientists arrived in Austin, the Department declined to make the firearms available to them. The Department agreed instead to conduct the tests itself and present its findings to the subcommittees. A short time later, the Department urged, for cost considerations, that the tests not be performed. As a result, no tests were performed on the firearms." ....."

Thanks. I'd forgotten the "automatic weapons" at Waco and didn't know most of the details.

You're welcome.

Pretty much, everything the BATFags, FIBS and inJustice said about the BDs and Waco were outright lies.

If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, read the autopsy reports.

For example, the government says that the Davidians shot the children, each other and themselves with handguns while huddling in the 'bunker'.

Yet, the autopsies showed that not a single body contained the bullet that killed them. The bullets didn't melt.

The government says that some of the adults wore gas masks to protect themselves from the CS gas and covered the childrens' faces with blankets that had been dipped in buckets of water.

Yet, the post-fire investigation showed there were no gas masks, blankets or buckets in or around any of the bodies.

The government says that the Davidians killed themselves on the day of the fire.

Yet, the bodies were all in varying states of decomposition and completeness and only half contained metabolized remnants of the chemical components that made up the CS gas used.

And finally, there's this:

Mountain Media 1/23/2000 Vin Suprynowicz "…. Congressional investigator March Bell says the treatment of those bodies was "very troubling. The bodies were preserved in a semi-frozen state in two trailers for the purposes of investigation. For some reason those trailers under the control of the FBI were allowed to not have any electricity running to them and the bodies deteriorated beyond the point where any sort of forensic evidence could be gathered. We were very disturbed by that." Indeed, the scene of the massacre was declared a "bio-hazard," and since the FBI had predetermined this was a mass suicide, "The FBI investigators were instructed to sift, wash, and bleach the evidence associated with the bodies, destroying much of its evidentiary value." …."

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