As per Fast and Furious, these were known illegal straw purchases some of which were purchased by known felons, which is also illegal.
To get the authorization for the BATF to overrule the background checks and approve straw purchases of large volume gun sales to known felons with the intent of trafficking them across international borders to a country in the middle of a violent drug war would have required knowledge and the formal sign off of very high level people in the White house, the Dept of Justice Legal, BATF and FBI agencies.
It would have also needed the sign off of the Dept of Homeland Security and the State Department given that the intent of the program was traffic illegally sold arms across international borders and should have been coordinated with Mexico's Dept of State and Law Enforcement
Several American LEO's and over 150 Mexican LEOs, Politicians and civilians have been murdered with weapons provided by the Fast and Furious operation, some of which actually paid for by the US Government with Economic Stimulus money.
As VP Biden would say, this is indeed a "Big ****ing Deal"
BTTT
Very nicely laid out and exactly what I was driving at.
Fully automatic Russian military AK-47s can be bought for around $100-200 in South and Central America, or from Venezuela. These much cheaper military grade machine guns can be brought into Mexico with already existing drug shipments with little to no risk so I don't see the value to the Drug Cartels in buying inferior, non military grade semi automatic weapons for over $1000 which 5-10 times the $100-200 going price for high quality, military grade fully auto machine guns.
It is also a much higher risk to traffic these price inflated, inferior quality semi auto AKs across the highly patrolled US - Mexico when the cheaper high quality machine guns can be shipped across the same borders the drugs are going through with little or no risk what so ever.
A lot of the circumstances of Fast and Furious simply do not make any logical sense when put into reasonable context.
It kind of makes you wonder what the heck really was going on with this program and why.
Just to add a fine point: I’ve been trying to find out if the actual, regular, gun dealers had written immunity to participate in this farce. If they didn’t then they are either nuts or not real dealers but fake ATF storefronts, which has happened before. But written immunity could not have come from a local ATF agent or office-—not even from the FBI. To be binding it would have to be signed by the US Attorney General -—or higher. And who put in the CCTV? If there was no advance immunity then these dealers are also in big trouble-—A dealer accepting a known false 4473 would be just as sickeagle as anything the individual fed agents did.——FWIW the fine is a quarter million$ and ten years.