Posted on 08/07/2002 11:30:14 AM PDT by kattracks
(CNSNews.com) - The Justice Department's own admission that the FBI lost track of an estimated 775 weapons during a period of just over two years is giving a gun rights group more ammunition to attack gun control efforts.
"How can you expect the federal government to control illegal guns when it can't even keep track of its own firearms?" asked Alan Gottlieb, head of the Second Amendment Foundation.
On Monday, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine issued a report, detailing the FBI's misplacing of the weapons as well as 400 laptop computers between October 1999 and January of this year. Fine also reported that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) lost more than 200 weapons during that same audit period.
"For years," Gottlieb said, "members of Congress and anti-gunners in the federal bureaucracy have been dreaming up laws and regulations to take guns away from law-abiding Americans. "Now it turns out, they should have been devoting some of that energy to keeping track of their own guns.
"Until Congress and the federal bureaucracy can clean up their own mess, they should stop treating citizens like criminals," Gottlieb said.
Fine was directed last month by Attorney General John Ashcroft to find out how the weapons were lost and to come up with a way to make sure it didn't happen again.
In releasing his report Monday, Fine said a few of the FBI's 775 missing weapons were recovered after being used in armed robberies.
The report also said New Orleans police found one of the missing guns in a murder victim's pocket. It had been stolen from an FBI agent's home in that city. Police in Atlanta recovered a stolen Drug Enforcement Administration weapon during a narcotics search at a suspect's residence and police in Philadelphia and Tampa recovered INS weapons that were used to commit armed robberies.
The FBI would not comment on the matter Wednesday and referred calls to the Justice Department. The department did not return phone calls seeking further comment.
According to a statement issued by Ashcroft Monday and listed on the Justice Department's website, "the FBI is one agency that has already taken important steps to rectify accounting systems for weapons and laptop computers. Through the FBI's new Security Division, there will be rigorous enforcement of accounting for property and individual responsibility for lost property.
"I am also directing all of the department's component agencies to take specific steps to ensure weapons and laptop computers do not fall into the wrong hands," Ashcroft stated.
Those "component agencies," according to Fine's report are the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshalls' Service. Combined, those agencies lost more than 16 weapons during their audit period from October, 1999 to August, 2001.
"This revelation is a warning siren that it's time common sense returned to government. Maybe anti-gunners on Capitol Hill should redirect their attention to keep the government's guns off the street, instead of working overtime to take guns out of the hands of honest citizens," said Gottlieb.
Fine suggested in his report that the Justice Department impose deadlines for reporting missing equipment or weapons by conducting an annual check of weapons inventories.
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NYUCK, NYUCK, NYUCK... : )
"Before last year, the FBI had not tken a complete inventory of laptops and weapons in almost a decade, despite an agency policy requiring one every two years, the investigation found."
I wonder why the Clinton Administration failed to carry out the audit policy?
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