Posted on 03/11/2011 1:48:44 PM PST by neverdem
A controversy about tactics used to break up an extensive Mexican gunrunning ring has prompted federal officials to reevaluate an aggressive law enforcement strategy to stop firearms trafficking.
The new scrutiny comes after two separate shootings in the past three months where federal agents were killed and guns recovered by investigators were later traced back to individuals already under investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee has charged that ATF agents allowed hundreds of firearms to flow from gun stores in the United States to criminals in Mexico and elsewhere in order to build cases against more prominent gun traffickers.
In one of those cases, ATF agents in Phoenix were deeply divided over when to conclude the investigation and arrest suspected traffickers. Some of those agents took their misgivings to Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) after two AK-47s traced back to a U.S. gun store were recovered near the scene where a Customs and Border Protection agent was killed.
The controversy highlights the difficulty ATF agents face in complex cases against increasingly sophisticated gunrunning rings, said former and current government officials. Because of weak gun laws and investigative limitations imposed at the urging of the gun lobby, many gunrunning cases end with little more than paperwork violations against buyers who procure guns for others. Such so-called straw purchaser cases rarely amount to more than charges of lying on federal documents.
"There is no gun-trafficking statute," said James Cavanaugh, a retired ATF supervisor. "We've been yelling for years that we need a gun-trafficking statute, because these cases are so difficult to prove."
This means that agents who want to make bigger cases must sometimes watch guns travel to criminals who use them in more serious crimes, such as drug trafficking...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
NormsRevenge was kind enough to provide this link.
http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-national/a-journalist-s-guide-to-project-gunwalker
At least WaPo is acknowledging the BATFE scandal.
here comes the spin, “we trying to stop gun trafficking”. Yeah right. You were trying to undermine the second amendment rights of American citizens by fabricating evidence to support your baseless allegations that US gun dealers were selling weapons to Mexican cartels.
Just passing along what looked to be a pretty good place for folks to start researching this latest ‘It takes a thief to catch a thief’ kind of approach / gubamint black ops policy soiree gone south..
“We were trying to break up a gun-running operation by giving them thousands of guns.”
I’m way too dumb to be running the government. I’m thankful that smarter people are doing it for me.
Here is the real story. ATF was orchestrating controlled buys, accepting money from suspected gun smugglers. In exchange they were having gun dealers, acting as undercover informants, giving weapons to the smugglers. Guns that ATF provided to criminals were allowed across the border without informing CBP, ICE, State, or Mexican authorities. Some of those guns were used to kill American law enforcement.
Why do you think ATF agents blew the whistle on this? Because letting contraband walk on a controlled buy operation isn't done. If you think you are going to lose control of the contraband you stop and arrest the suspect for the crimes he has committed.
This is a really hard spin by the Post and it is the second article of its kind. DOJ is really trying to get control of the story. Next, I would expect some kind of IA investigation against the agent who took the story to Sen. Grassley.
Yeah, that's it exactly. That happened.
Agent Zapata was killed by a gun that wasn’t part of “Fast and Furious”, but was smuggled by a target of the investigation.
It was all a propaganda lead up to ATF revealing that "we have traced" from dealer A to user B ~ but it ended up in the death of a Border Patrol officer.
I don't think so. I don't they have identified the weapon that killed Border Patrol Terry, or if they have, they haven't said so.
If they would call CBP and give a little info, CBP would do all the work for them at the border and get them for attempted weapons smuggling.
A bit like trying to stop speeding by going out and buying a NASCAR racer...:^)
No, that would be semi-legitimate. I'm sure what the rights-oriented think they were doing was trying to bolster the fiction that it's our gun rights fueling the trade of guns into Mexico by making it semi-true and hoping to get tracebacks on these guns later. Not that it would justify curtailing our rights even if that WERE the case, but that's what they'd try to do with it.
Amazing how these tools down at Pravda on the Potomac even state the opposing position in such a way that it tends to justify the tyranny of their bed buddies down at BATFE.
Yes, a new law is certainly the answer for prosecuting crimes you lack the evidence to prove. Moron. What new law do you want, a pre-crime law?
>>”There is no gun-trafficking statute,” said James Cavanaugh, a retired ATF supervisor. “We’ve been yelling for years that we need a gun-trafficking statute, because these cases are so difficult to prove.”
>
>Yes, a new law is certainly the answer for prosecuting crimes you lack the evidence to prove. Moron. What new law do you want, a pre-crime law?
Maybe what he’s saying is he wants a law which doesn’t require such a burden of proof... something where they can prove some technicality and then ‘presume’ trafficking from that.
Didn’t we try to overthrow the Sandinista regime by doing this in the 1980’s?
Presumption of innocence, bane of wannabe tyrants. Damn that burden of proof!
This whole WaPo article is a load of hokum and its “explanations” are totally phony baloney. How does allowing guns INTO Mexico without the knowledge of the Mexican government bring about detecting and arresting supposed U.S. gun-smuggling “rings”? Once the guns cross the border, there goes the evidence! No U.S. jurisdiction in Mexico!
And many of the involved U.S. gun dealers themselves notified the ATF that suspicious purchases were being attempted, and yet they were told by the ATF to complete the sales. So, clearly it wasn’t the U.S. gun dealers that were the problem. If the purchasers were the investigation target, then why weren’t they arrested at the border to Mexico where the ATF still had jurisdiction? What good did it do to let the evidence disappear into Mexico?
Oh,and why haven’t any arrests been made if this was such a great strategy?
There’s no way in Hades that this would have ever worked like the ATF is now trying to claim. So, then, what was the ATF really up to? The only thing that makes any sense to me is that the ATF was deliberately trying to flood Mexico with arms smuggled from the U.S. to bolster the phony claim of the Obama administration that there was an “iron river” of guns being smuggled from the U.S. to Mexico, in particular, that these guns were originating from legitimate U.S. retail mom and pop gun shops. You know, like Bubba’s Hunting Shack and the like.
Folks, the Mexican drug cartels are armed with fully automatic weapons, hand grenades, and even bazookas. Nothing even remotely resembling this stuff is for retail sale in the U.S. And the cartels don’t need to smuggle anemic semi-automatic hunting rifles and target pistols from U.S. retail guns shops. They’ve simply been paying off the corrupt Mexican Federales and getting all the military-grade weapons they could possibly use. No fuss, no muss.
[BTW, I made this same post on the WaPo comments page for the article. I suggest everyone here do the same for their posts here.]
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