I don’t understand this Gunrunner Issue. Did Obamas people just sell guns to gangs? Why? Were they to patrol the border or something? Was it a way to make money? I don’t get it—its so complicated I can’t see the problem. Please make it simple for an old man.
There are three possible explanations, none of them very sensible or satisfying:
1) The DOJ claims it was done to lead them to some "big fish" in the cartels. Perhaps so, but in that case they were perversely inept.
2) Follow the money. Maybe somebody (cartels?) wanting weaponry in Mexico was paying off one or more of the major figures in F&F. Maybe the top F&F guys thought that because they were detached from ATF itself and working directly under the US Atty in Arizona, controls would be sloppy (the US Attorney not being familiar with ATF operational SOP) and blurred and they could get away with it. Seems a very high-risk strategy, with a nasty downside.
3) Some higher-ups wanted to exaggerate the # of weapons flowing from the US to Mexico and get Mexico more ticked off to further anti 2nd Amendment initiatives in the US. Also weird. From the lack of DOJ cooperation and vigor, it would seem 1) and 3) are the most likely.
Project Gunrunner was a legitimate if distasteful operation to stop US firearms purchased at retail from going to Mexico to aid the cartel uprising there. This was initiated under Bush.
However, Gunrunner never found the quantity of guns going to Mexico that many antigunners thought was the case. This was not surprising to anyone who had been paying attention as the cartels were mostly getting their weapons on the South American market, from the international arms market and from raided/defected Mexican military installations. Weapons used in this sting operation were equipped with tracking devices or were non-functional.
When Obama came into office, of course one of his priorities was gun control. When Gunrunner didn’t turn up the numbers he needed to justify additional gun control, he ordered them to “find” the numbers and (apparently) if they couldn’t do that they were to MAKE the numbers by ensuring the guns went to Mexico. Operation Fast and Furious was born as a subproject of Gunrunner to ensure that the Administration would have the numbers to ‘justify’ the agenda they wanted to pass.
F&F was basically an operation to sell guns to anyone who wanted them (criminal or not) and then wait for them to turn up at crime scenes in Mexico, for the Mexican authorities to ask the US to trace them. There was no tracking, no attempt to follow where the weapons were going. They also didn’t inform the Mexican government that this was happening. The number of “US guns used in Mexican crimes” that would be generated would be used to push more gun control.
This all backfired when a couple of Federal agents were killed by firearms sold in this operation. Think about it - no trackers, and they were *waiting for the guns to be used in crimes and recovered*. What does that tell you?
They sold about 2000 weapons in this program. We still have no idea where about 1400 of them are. Hundreds of Mexicans have been killed by F&F guns; at least one Mexican military chopper has been shot down, and some of the guns are now reappearing at US crime scenes. US citizens are being killed by this program.
The gun stores that sold these guns were screaming to the ATF that this was wrong, the ATF was screaming to the DOJ that this was wrong, and DOJ told everyone down the chain to just go ahead with it. Until the US government started F&F, US civilian guns were just a fraction of the weapons in use in Mexico. Now the biggest arms dealer to the cartels in Mexico... is the US Government. All thanks to Obama wanting numbers to support his policies, and he seems to have no problem if people die because of it.
There is also a parallel operation that has been discovered operating out of Florida, Operation Castaway. They were running guns to the leftists in Honduras, a nation we basically have had NO gun issues with in the past.