Project Gunrunner

What you still fail to realize is that there is a huge difference between being FOR specific stricter gun laws (something that the majority of Americans and gun owners are for, by the way), and being "anti-gun". I'm afraid that you have fallen into the trap of painting with a very broad brush.

 

We've been thru this before, have our own opinions, and do not need to re-visit this.

 

Good, then you now know that there's a huge difference between wanting some stricter gun laws, and being "anti-gun", then. All is not lost for you.

 

Whatever floats your boat, my friend.

 

Mexican attorney general demands explanation on Operation Fast and Furious:

Mexico’s attorney general is demanding an explanation from the United States as evidence grows the Obama administration was more deeply involved in Operation Fast and Furious than top officials admitted in previous statements.

Operation Fast and Furious was a federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives effort to track more than 2,000 smuggled guns to Mexican drug cartels by allowing gang members to purchase them illegally from U.S. gun stores then take them back to their leaders.

However, the federal agency lost track of many of the guns. Some later were traced to murders of police and civilians in Mexico.

Officially, the Justice Department says the operation backfired but did not admit U.S. agents sold the guns to the Mexican smugglers.

In June, President Barack Obama said he would take “appropriate action” against organizers of the operation. He said it never was approved by top Justice Department officials.

Investigative news stories this week cast doubt on reports of no high-level government involvement.

Documents obtained from Fox News show ATF agents sold some of the guns to gang members. They allegedly purchased the guns with taxpayer money.

Mexican Attorney General Marisela Morales called Operation Fast and Furious “an attack on Mexicans’ security.”

She said she learned about the operation in the news media rather than being told about it in advance by U.S. government officials.

She said that if U.S. federal officials were involved, it would be a “betrayal” of Mexico while its police and military were fighting a war against drug cartels. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the war that started in December 2006.

Morales said she would await results of congressional investigations into the operation before making any conclusions over who should be blamed.

The House Oversight Committee is investigating claims the ATF was joined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Agency in allowing the guns to be smuggled into Mexico.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the committee’s chairman, said the trail of evidence about who authorized Operation Fast and Furious leads back to the White House.

The Fox News report added fuel to the claims.

Operation Fast and Furious began in October 2009 with sales from American gun stores to the gang members. They eventually spent $1.25 million on the guns.

In June 2010, ATF picked up the pace of the smuggling by allowing its agents to sell the guns to gang members, according to government documents.

ATF Agent John Dodson was ordered to buy six semi-automatic Draco pistols then sell them to buyers he knew were illegal, the documents say. Other agents watched from nearby cars.

Dodson says he acted on his own, against supervisors’ instructions, to monitor the movement of the guns to a “stash house.” He kept the house under surveillance until a vehicle showed up to pick up the guns for smuggling into Mexico.

Dodson says he called for a team to move in to arrest the smugglers, but his supervisors refused. The guns then disappeared from ATF surveillance.

Dodson reportedly argued loudly with his supervisors in their Phoenix office, which prompted them to transfer him to a menial job.

Months later, one Operation Fast and Furious gun was found at the site where U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was shot and killed.

Dodson then became a whistleblower against Operation Fast and Furious.

The report this week that ATF agents sold the guns to smugglers follows another news story this month that says three high-level Obama administration officials knew about Operation Fast and Furious while it was occurring.

Source

 

U.S. Government Used Taxpayer Funds to Buy, Sell Weapons During 'Fast and Furious,' Documents Show:

Not only did U.S. officials approve, allow and assist in the sale of more than 2,000 guns to the Sinaloa cartel -- the federal government used taxpayer money to buy semi-automatic weapons, sold them to criminals and then watched as the guns disappeared.

This disclosure, revealed in documents obtained by Fox News, could undermine the Department of Justice's previous defense that Operation Fast and Furious was a "botched" operation where agents simply "lost track" of weapons as they were transferred from one illegal buyer to another. Instead, it heightens the culpability of the federal government as Mexico, according to sources, has opened two criminal investigations into the operation that flooded their country with illegal weapons.

Operation Fast and Furious began in October 2009. In it, federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives encouraged gun stores to sell weapons to an arms smuggling gang, then watched as the guns crossed the border and were used in crimes. Each month, the agency allowed hundreds of guns to go South, despite opposition from some agents.

All told, the gang spent more than $1.25 million for the illegal guns.

In June 2010, however, the ATF dramatically upped the ante, making the U.S. government the actual "seller" of guns.

According to documents obtained by Fox News, Agent John Dodson was ordered to buy six semi-automatic Draco pistols -- two of those were purchased at the Lone Wolf gun store in Peoria, Ariz. An unusual sale, Dodson was sent to the store with a letter of approval from David Voth, an ATF group supervisor.

Dodson then sold the weapons to known illegal buyers, while fellow agents watched from their cars nearby.

This was not a "buy-bust" or a sting operation, where police sell to a buyer and then arrest them immediately afterward. In this case, agents were "ordered" to let the sale go through and follow the weapons to a stash house.

According to sources directly involved in the case, Dodson felt strongly that the weapons should not be abandoned and the stash house should remain under 24-hour surveillance. However, Voth disagreed and ordered the surveillance team to return to the office. Dodson refused, and for six days in the desert heat kept the house under watch, defying direct orders from Voth.

A week later, a second vehicle showed up to transfer the weapons. Dodson called for an interdiction team to move in, make the arrest and seize the weapons. Voth refused and the guns disappeared with no surveillance.

According to a story posted Sunday on a website dedicated to covering Fast and Furious, Voth gave Dodson the assignment to "dirty him up," since Dodson had become the most vocal critic of the operation.

"I think Dodson demanded the letter from Voth to cover both himself and the FFL (Federal Firearm Licensee). He didn't want to be hung out to dry by Voth," a source told the website "Sipsey Street Irregulars."

Subsequent to this undercover operation, sources told Sipsey, "Dodson just about came apart all over them (his supervisors). In a 'screaming match' that was heard throughout the Phoenix office by many employees, Dodson yelled at Voth and Assistant Special Agent in Charge George Gillett, 'Why not just go direct and empty out the (ATF) arms room?" (to the cartels), or words to that effect.'

After the confrontation, ATF managers transferred Dodson to a more menial job. Months later, after the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, Dodson blew the whistle and went public about the federal government's gunrunning operation.

Source

 

Documents Suggest Holder Knew About 'Fast and Furious' Earlier Than He Claimed:

For the first time, documents appear to show Attorney General Eric Holder was made aware of the Operation Fast and Furious earlier than he claimed -- up to nine months earlier.

The documents seem to contradict what Holder told a House Judiciary Committee on May 3, when he said he could not recall the exact date, but he'd "probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."

However, in a July 2010 memo, Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, told Holder straw buyers in the Operation Fast and Furious case "are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels."

Also, on Oct.18, 2010, one of Holder's chief deputies, Lanny Breuer, chief of the department's Criminal Division, told Holder in a memo that prosecutors were ready to issue indictments in Operation Fast and Furious.

Documents also show, contrary to earlier reports, the Justice Department was aware that ATF agents under the department's direction were involved in the controversial practice known as "gun walking" -- allowing illicit gun sales to proceed to track the traffickers to higher-ups. The department has said it did not allow guns to "walk."

When agents "let guns walk," they stop surveillance and allow criminals to transfer weapons to others. In this case, that meant allowing the guns to cross the border into Mexico. It is a highly controversial practice agents typically are taught not to do.

However, in an Oct. 17, 2010 memo, Deputy Attorney General Jason Weinstein asks another attorney in the Criminal Division if Breuer should do a press conference when Fast and Furious is announced, but says, "It's a tricky case, given the number of guns that have walked."

His associate, James Trusty writes back, "It's not going to be any big surprise that a bunch of US guns are being used in MX (Mexico), so I’m not sure how much grief we'll get for 'gun walking.'"

Until now, there's been an attempt to portray Operation Fast and Furious as a rogue operation by ATF agents in Phoenix and the Arizona U.S. Attorney's Office. But insiders claim these documents show the Department of Justice in Washington was intimately aware of the case almost from the beginning.

In response to the documents released Monday, the Justice Department said Holder's response referred to when he first learned of the "troubling tactics" of the program, not the name of it. A department spokesman also says that the "gun walking" referred to in the October 2010 email exchange is about another case initiated before Operation Fast and Furious.

Source

 

Pressure Grows for Holder's Resignation; Subpoenas Threatened:

Pressure is intensifying rapidly for the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder over the fatally flawed Operation Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal — with Rep. Paul Gosar demanding that Holder quit immediately and Arizona sheriffs saying he should be fired if he won’t resign.

Gosar, an Arizona Republican, issued the call for Holder’s resignation on “Fox and Friends” today.

Meanwhile, Rep. Darrell Issa said on “Fox News Sunday” that his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee may issue subpoenas against top Justice Department officials as early as this week over the controversial Operation Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal. The California Republican indicated that some government actions in the Fast and Furious scheme of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) could have been felonious.

Arizona sheriffs would welcome such subpoenas, as they called Friday not only for Holder to step down or be fired but also for President Barack Obama to instigate an independent investigation into the controversy.

And U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has been dogging Fast and Furious along with Issa, maintains that Holder is stonewalling their investigations — and he’s tired of it. I always tell every agency . . . that I have been investigating, the longer you stonewall, when the truth comes out, the more egg you are going to have on your face,” the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee told Newsmax last week.

Under Fast and Furious, at least 1,400 weapons were allowed to cross the border into Mexico in the hope that they could be traced and would lead ATF agents to cartel bosses.

But ATF lost track of most of the weapons, many of which have been linked to dozens of crimes, including the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and the slaying of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata.

The Arizona sheriffs, speaking at the state capitol in Phoenix on Friday, denounced the 2009 ATF program as a betrayal of state law enforcement. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu noted that the sheriffs joining him in calling for the investigation are split evenly between Democrats and Republicans.

“This is not a partisan issue, but a serious public safety issue that threatens the safety of our citizens and our deputies,” Babeu said. “Our own federal government has armed the very cartels that our law enforcement are fighting with on a daily basis.”

The sheriffs’ plea for an inquiry came even as Holder himself acknowledged Friday in a five-page letter he sent to six leading members of Congress that the gunrunning operation was “fundamentally flawed” and “completely unacceptable."

However, much of Holder’s letter spurned responsibility for the backfired program and assailed Republican criticism instead. Holder’s letter attacked Gosar specifically for his statement last week that administration officials could be considered “accessories to murder” for their role in the ATF program.

“Such irresponsible and inflammatory rhetoric must be repudiated in the strongest possible terms,” Holder's letter said. “Those who serve in the ranks of law enforcement are our Nation’s heroes and deserve our Nation’s thanks, not the disrespect that is being heaped on them by those who seek political advantage. I trust you feel similarly and I call on you to denounce these statements.”

Gosar refuses to do any such thing, insisting instead that the real issue is the need for government officials to take accountability for their actions.

“This starts with accountability from the top,” said Gosar, who also is a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Pinpointing accountability also is the intent of subpoenas that Issa promises. Issa, who indicated on “Fox News Sunday” that some government actions in Fast and Furious could have been felonious, said his committee intends to grill Justice officials, including Holder, to determine "what did they know and when did they know it?"

"Very clearly he [Holder] had to know when Brian Terry was killed and everyone realized these were Fast and Furious weapons," Issa said. "He had to know something serious had happened, and that's months before he says he knew. If we assume for a moment he didn't know, the question is, is he competent? If in fact a border patrol agent has been murdered, 2,000 weapons have gone [missing], this program has completely gone off the rails — why didn't he know?"

Source

 

I'm glad to see that you support active gun control that regulates the trafficking of guns and the sales of guns. There clearly was a failure to administer these laws here. Many of your ilk don't favor ANY forms of gun control.

 

It appears that our Justice Department had an active part in bypassing said regulations, and arming the Mexican drug cartels, eh?

 

House Committee to Subpoena Holder in 'Fast and Furious' Probe:

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is planning to subpoena Attorney General Eric Holder this week to determine who in the Justice Department knew about "Operation Fast and Furious" -- the plan to let thousands of guns sold in the U.S. get into Mexican drug cartel hands -- and when they knew it.

The subpoena targeting Holder aims to get at the heart of the authorization for the program, and when the people in charge decided the program was a problem.

"When did they know it wasn't the right way to do it and why (did) they keep doing it?" asked committee chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Issa, who is also a member of the House Judiciary Committee where Holder testified in May that he'd only learned of the program a few weeks earlier, told "Fox News Sunday" that "people in the top" of the Justice Department knew about the operation, were "well-briefed about it, and seemed to be the command and control and funding for this program."

Issa said those officials, who may or may not include Holder, would have known that the program was facing objections from law enforcement personnel in the field, but appeared to continue to let guns "walk" across the border.

"We didn't just have a few (guns) not be tracked. The whole program was about not tracking them until they were found in the scene of crimes. And they didn't just allow. They facilitated just one guy buy, one straw buy, over 700 weapons," Issa said.

On Friday, Holder issued a stern response to calls for a special counsel to probe the matter, saying he told the truth when he informed Congress he only heard about the program for the first time in April 2011. He added that earlier mentions of the program listed in at least five memos dated to 2010 did not indicate on first blush any problems with the program.

"I do not and cannot read them cover to cover," Issa wrote. "Here, no issues concerning 'Fast and Furious' were brought to my attention because the information presented in the report did not suggest a problem."

Freshman Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, said he can understand someone at Holder's level not reviewing every document that reaches his desk, but that when Holder knew he was going to testify about "Fast and Furious" to a House panel, he should have gotten brushed up on the program and its impact, including the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Guns linked to Fast and Furious were found at Terry's crime scene.

Labrador told Fox News that the response from Holder leaves him with no option but to conclude dishonesty or incompetence.

"By the time Officer Terry had been killed, there were other crimes linked to these guns. Why did he not do the research and find out how much his office knew? He was either lying or willfully neglecting to do his due diligence before he came before Congress," Labrador said.

"If, in fact, a border patrol agent has been murdered, 2,000 weapons have gone, this program has completely gone off of the rails, why didn't he know?" Issa asked.

In his response to House Republicans, Holder said that his critics have political motivations and added that he takes issue with the allegation that federal agents were "accessories to murder."

"Such irresponsible and inflammatory rhetoric must be repudiated in the strongest possible terms," Holder wrote. "Those who serve in the ranks of law enforcement are our nation's heroes and deserve our nation's thanks, not the disrespect that is being heaped on them by those who seek political advantage."

But Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff Paul Babeu said his state's elected sheriffs, of whom nine out of 15 are Democrats, support a special counsel.

"My deputies and officers across the southwest could face the barrel of a gun that our own government, Eric Holder and the president, put into the hands of these criminals," Babeu told Fox News. "Whoever approved this should be criminally held to account for this."

Issa said a special counsel should be appointed because "Eric Holder cannot investigate himself," but he said he's not going to let that get in the way of his investigation, which has been conducted in conjunction with Senate Judiciary Committee ranking Republican Charles Grassley of Iowa.

"Our investigation, along with Senator Grassley, has to get to the bottom of this sooner, not later, because the American people and people in Mexico don't trust their government right now," he said.

Labrador said whoever came up with the Fast and Furious program "needs to be
fired."

"Anybody who failed to do their duty, because of this program, needs to be fired as well," he said.

Source

 

Well, it is clear that they were engaged in some sort of operation to expose the trafficking of guns across our southern border. What exactly went wrong with this has not been made clear yet. I'm quite sure you will be on top of that, but I AM impressed with your advocacy of our gun laws in this regard. It always heartens me when I see an anti-controller be consistent by not contradicting themselves by advocating prosecution for crimes against laws they actually disagree with.

 

It's pretty clear to most that this is a huge cover-up. It is finally making its way through the MSM.

 

NRA's LaPierre: 'Fast and Furious' Was Plot Against Second Amendment:

The government-sanctioned gunrunning operation, Fast and Furious, was a plot to undermine Second Amendment rights in the United States, National Rifle Association president Wayne LaPierre charged on Friday in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV.

“It’s the only thing that makes any sense,” LaPierre said. “Over a period of two or three years they were running thousands and thousands of guns to the most evil people on earth. At the same time they were yelling ’90 per cent… of the guns the Mexican drug cartels are using come from the United States.’

“That was a phony figure from the very start. Even the Wikileaks cables from our own State Department prove they are coming from Central America, they are not coming from the U.S. Every police officer will tell you that they’re coming from Russia, they’re coming from China, most of them are coming from Central America and a lot of them are coming from defections from the Mexican Army.”

But LaPierre said that President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were determined to make it appear that most weapons used by the Mexicans came from north of the border, “so they could stick more gun legislation on honest American gun owners of the United States.”

LaPierre insisted that the whole Fast and Furious scandal, in which he said “thousands and thousands” of weapons were allowed to cross into Mexico, would never have come to light at all if it hadn’t been for last December’s murder of U.S. Border Agent Brian Terry in Arizona.

“We wouldn’t know about this at all if (Terry) had not been killed and some of the good, honest, decent federal agents down the line had enough of the stench coming out of Washington and started to use the Whistleblower Act to go public and call the Justice Department out on this whole rotten, stinking scheme.

“Otherwise thousands of guns would still be going over the border into the Mexican drug cartels and the president and the attorney general and the secretary of state would all be running around going ’90 percent of the guns come from America’ in an attempt to seek political advantage and in an attempt to enact more gun control laws on honest American citizens and use this whole issue politically against the Second Amendment of the United States.”

LaPierre says Fast and Furious is the biggest cover-up since the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon in the early-1970s.

“Look at what has happened,” he said. “We had our Department of Justice under the Obama administration running thousands and thousands of guns over the border and watching them go directly into the hands of some of the most evil people on earth, the Mexican drug cartels.

“At the same time they were letting the reputation of good, honest, decent Americans, law-abiding American gun dealers, be ruined.

“They ordered these sales to be made, they even overrode the InstaCheck system and ordered the dealers to make the sales. Then, when it all starts coming out, there’s a massive cover-up.”

He joined the chorus of Republican Congressmen calling for Holder to quit and for a special prosecutor to be appointed to investigate the entire scandal which has resulted in dozens of crimes committed both in the U.S. and in Mexico being committed with the smuggled weapons.

“My gosh, Valerie Plame gets a special prosecutor,” he said, referring to the CIA agent whose name was leaked during the George W. Bush presidency. “And all we get on Fast and Furious, where people are dead, a federal agent is dead, hundreds of crimes are being committed, is an Eric Holder cover-up.

“They crossed the line. They need to be held responsible. We need to get to the bottom of this and the only way we are going to get to the bottom of it is a special prosecutor.”

He rebutted Democratic claims that subpoenas issued this week by the House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa were nothing more than a politically motivated “fishing expedition.”

LaPierre said, “Do we really want our Department of Justice … running thousands of guns into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels? Running a massive campaign to manipulate public opinion? Ruining the lives of good, honest American citizens when they knew the truth, and then participating in a massive cover-up?

“Doesn’t that sound like something that would happen more from a South American dictatorship than what we expect in the Good Ol’ USA?

“This can’t be allowed to stand. What has happened in Fast and Furious is the equivalent of our Justice Department becoming willing co-conspirators with the Mexican drug cartels in their crimes. If any citizen in this country had sold a gun to the Mexican drug cartels and then those cartels had used those guns to kill good, honest, decent people, any U.S. Attorney worth his salt would indict that citizen for accessory to murder. That’s what’s happened here.”

LaPierre said that re-electing Obama to a second term would destroy Second Amendment rights, claiming that his Supreme Court appointees would “erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights and exorcise it from the Constitution of the U.S.”

But he said the NRA had not and will not endorse any individual GOP candidate. “All those candidates have positive records on the Second Amendment issues. We are not going to get into the Republican primaries,” he said.

“Our job is to protect the Second Amendment and that means that every gun owner, every Second Amendment supporter needs to do everything they can to make sure that President Obama does not get a second term so that he can destroy the Second Amendment.

“This is the most dangerous election in our lifetime for the Second Amendment freedom that American citizens have. A second term by President Obama will break the back of that freedom in this country.”

Source

 

Ayuh,.... Perfectly clear to anybody with 1/2 a brain, 'n abit of common sense....
'n of course, this points out those posters that don't have a 1/2 a brain, 'n Zero common sense...

 

From onalandline's post #464 above --

Like him or not, Wayne LaPierre does have a very valid point! If you or I had done 1/100th of what BATF did, the Justice Dept. would have our head on a pike!

 

And we should care what Wayne LaPierre thinks,..........eh, why, exactly?

A "Plot Against Second Amendment", Really???


Surely you can do better than this, friend. Try putting you OWN words to paper instead of regurditating this nonsense.

 

I believe the NRA is correct. Create a symptom, and then tailor the problem to suit your needs.

 

No More Funding for Future 'Fast and Furious' Programs:

Oct 19, 2011

Stung by scandal, Senate approves amendment that bars funding for programs that include the transfer of firearms to drug cartels...

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J63rifi6QY"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J63rifi6QY[/ame]

 

You'll have to be more specific than that, friend.
Anything less comes across as somewhat hysterical and conspiratorial.

You really believe that "'Fast and Furious' Was Plot Against Second Amendment"?

REALLY? Apparently you'll buy anything.

 

You tell me why else this "operation" was put into play? They knew that once the guns disappeared into Mexico, the trace was gone. The BATFE had no jurisdiction in Mexico, and Mexican officials were not briefed on the "operation". The guns were only rediscovered after they turned up in a crime. Nothing accomplished, except to make U.S. gun retailers a scapegoat. Of course, nobody would admit that, and I'm sure placing blame on the retailers was not the only goal of this "operation".

 

You call that specificity? I guess that you find it difficult to construct your own arguments, preferring instead to copy/paste other's words.

Quite a conspiracy you've concocted there.

 

I didn't copy/paste anything in my prior post. That's beside the point.

It is what it is. I cannot just simply make something up. I gues the truth of the matter somehow bothers you.

 

Clearly, anyone with a strong opinion on the gun rights issue - be they pro or con - will have a certain amount of confirmational bias in developing their viewpoint regarding the disaster that is Operation Fast and Furious.

For me, this are personal aspects of this issue. I served in the U.S. Border Patrol for a time, and I still have friends who work in that agency. I did not know Brian Terry personally, but several of my friends did, and they remember him as a dedicated and honorable man and they took his death hard. They are angry and outraged. One friend, a supervisory agent out of the Lordsburg, NM station, noted to me in conversation that there were two bandit gangs operating in their area that were known to be armed, and he was wondering if the guns they had might not be guns that Fast and Furious provided. The growing take on Fast and Furious being bandied about amongst law enforcement on the Southern Border is that it was a clear and obvious attempt to feed violence in Mexico that would inspire greater support for a gun control agenda here in the United States.

Think about that for a moment: this theory was not manufactured in the halls of the NRA or by tinfoil hat people. This idea has taken root in the men and and women who serve in border security agencies! "At what point," my friend grumbled to me one day, "does incompetence become malevolence?"

Those who support gun control will never accept such a theory publicly. It is too much a testament to their "at any costs" mindset.

In the end, the facts are clear:

The Justice Department, under AG Eric Holder, launched an operation to facilitate straw sales and to send large numbers of guns into Mexico. The ostentatious purpose was to identify gun smuggling routes and to target high-profile cartel members for arrest... but there was no provision to track the guns once they crossed into Mexico and BATFE agents were ordered to "stand down" when they sought to block the guns from actually going into Mexico itself.

Political leaders, from Holder to Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama himself, all made claims insinuating that "90 percent" of guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico came from the United States as an argument for stricter gun laws, including a new so-called "assault weapon" ban. These were false statements, but they gave themselves plausible deniability by enabling them to fudge if challenged on that figure. They also defamed and demonized gun dealers on the Southern border as being the source of these guns, even though those dealers had worked with BATFE and only allowed straw purchases to proceed under direct orders of the BATFE and the Justice Department.

At one point, it is known that at least one BATFE agent went to a dealer with a letter - on BATFE letterhead - ordering the dealer to provide four AK-47 derivative handguns, using the letter in lieu of completed 4473 background check forms. Federal funds were used to purchase the weapons, all four of which were later found at crime scenes in Mexico.

Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed in a gun battle on the Mexican border... and two guns found at the scene were traced back to the Fast and Furious operation. Thus began the cover-up by the Holder Justice Department. Obvious lies and distortions of fact have been given in response to Congressional subpoenas, and the BATFE agents in charge of the operation were promoted to higher paying jobs in other areas.

In the end, over 2000 guns were funneled to the cartels by our own government, and lives have been lost in the violence fueled by those guns. These are documented facts.

In the end, there is no arguing that we still don't know the full story. Gun control supporters will insist that the BATFE was only struggling to do their job handicapped by the NRA and their refusal to allow implementation of "common sense gun legislation". Gun rights advocates will find much more sinister motivations behind the government's actions.

As for me, I personally believe that the sinister motivations are the actual reality. I believe that Barack Obama - a political animal if there ever was one - personally supports draconian gun control; but facing the political reality of a Congress hostile to the controls he wants he chose a more subtle approach. He has appointed fiercely anti-gun rights people to high positions of power in his administration. He appointed two Supreme Court justices - Kagan and Sotomayor - who both lied to Congress and claimed they would support precedent on gun rights such as the DC v. Heller ruling but at their first opportunity voted to overturn that ruling. Now we have Fast and Furious, and it is clear to me that it is simply one more facet of a corrupt administration's overall efforts to undermine our Constitutional rights. They wanted to see violence explode in Mexico, and for that violence to directly threaten the public safety of Americans, all in hopes that it would enable them to take the gloves off and to push for a comprehensive assault upon the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.

You can believe what you want, but barring some new revelation I don't see how one can come to any other honest conclusion.

 

Thank you for the personal insight. It's a shame that our government has to try so hard to lay blame falsely in order to try and take our rights away, all while subjecting our border agents and others to harm.