‘Lackadaisical’ U.S. Park Police lose hundreds of guns, watchdog group says

Poor management and shoddy oversight have led the U.S. Park Police to lose track of hundreds of rifles, handguns and machine guns, a watchdog agency said.

“We found that staff at all levels — from firearms program managers to their employees — had no clear idea of how many weapons they maintained due to incomplete and poorly managed inventory controls,” investigators with the U.S. Interior Department’s inspector general’s office said, in United Press International. “As a result, we discovered hundreds of handguns, rifles and shotguns not accounted for on official USPP inventory records.”

...due to incomplete and poorly managed inventory controls....

***
Is that another way of saying they sold off government property and pocketed the money?

I am willing to bet that a whole lot of laptops and such in various government agencies all over the country also go missing in a similar fashion.

Reading the article with a bit more critical eye, most of the firearms that were “unaccounted for” were due to simple clerical errors.

1,400 were in storage, when they were to have been destroyed.

200 were handguns transferred from the BATFE whose paperwork got lost somewhere.

Only 18 were rifles and pistols that are unaccounted for, likely over a period of decades.

In a national agency, this is simply not that big of a scandal. People quit, die, or change jobs. Deadlines come up and choices between a critical job and an inventory have to be made.

Paperwork showing legitimate disposition gets misplaced, destroyed, or lost.

Inventory requirements change and items are mislabeled. I had a portable shelter, used for men and machines, about 8x8x20 feet, mislabled as a "power winch".

I had all of the above happen to me during my career, and that was just one individual.

For an example, when I was in Panama, I was looking for a place to put a radio repeater.

There was a nice 200 foot tower on Ft. Clayton. I looked and looked, and never was able to find the owner. No one was willing to claim ownership of that tower, and it was right in the middle of base, in full sight of everybody.

>>In a national agency, this is simply not that big of a scandal.

I disagree - it is a big scandal, and symptomatic of an even much bigger one.

The point is that if you were a gun dealer, and had the exact same track record as the government in a situation like this, you would be out of business pronto - if not locked up for gun running.

Why should we, as citizens be held to a higher standard than the government holds itself?

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