I’m really getting confused. I was listening to talk radio last week, don’t remember who, and it was stated that Gunwalker and Fast & Furious are two separate operations.
Gunwalker was started during Bush’s admin and closely monitored. Fast & Furious was begun shortly after Obama’s inauguration and is solely owned by this admin.
Yet I see articles all over that talk about the two as tho they’re one and the same. Can somebody straighten this out for me?
Gunwalker is the generic term for the overall scandal. Fast and Furious and other programs are part of the scandal, but not all of it.
"Gunrunner" started under President Bush, and was essentially an intense inspection of all the Federal Firearms Licensees in the border states. It is likely that there were some straw purchasers that were arrested this way.
Gunrunner was mostly a bust, though, because there simply wasn't any "Iron River of Guns" flowing into Mexico. Gunrunner made relatively few arrests and was condemned in an audit as being ineffective.
As I recall, the average age of a gun traced from Mexico was about 14 years. This is consistent with the understanding that most of the guns going to Mexico are single items, bought from individuals by brothers or uncles, or fathers, and sent back to Mexico in backpacks or trunks to relatives for their own defense.
At least, that appears to be the case before the ATF actively encouraged straw buyers to buy large numbers of new semi-auto rifles and handguns in bulk, some of them, it appears, with U.S. government money. All that "gunwalking" occurred under the Obama administration with the "fast and furious" program, "castaway", and any other similar programs that have not yet been uncovered. We know that "gunwalking" was encouraged at a couple of gun stores in Texas, that don't fall under the jurisdiction of either "fast and furious" or "castaway".
“Gunwalker was started during Bush’s admin and closely monitored. Fast & Furious was begun shortly after Obama’s inauguration and is solely owned by this admin.”
Bush started Gunrunner, not Gunwalker (aka Fast & Furious). The names understandably cause confusion.
Fast & Furious was started by the Obama administration to be part of Gunrunner which was already underway, but did not involve straw purchases up to that point.
I hope that clears up the confusion.