I don't really care about banning gun ownership so much, but I would like to see more gun regulation. Right now it's far too easy for a gun that's purchased legally in the US to just magically slip out of the purchaser's hands and then wind up on the black market where it makes it's way into, for example, a Mexican drug cartel's hands. And there is rarely if ever much of anything done to prevent this kind of stuff.
Who knew buying guns and giving them to mexican cartels would result in them getting guns?
Kilroy, you should know better. NOBODY bought guns and "gave" them to cartels. The cartels sent guys to buy guns. Guys who were LEGALLY allowed to buy guns. The ATF merely didn't stop them buying them.
"Operation Don't Do Anything" would have seen even MORE guns get into cartel hands, with less way to track them.
Stop spreading blatant propaganda. And I'm sure you know damn well that it was a Bush era ATF idea, there's no demonstrable evidence that the idea came from, or was endorsed by, Holder, and the agent in charge was the same agent running the show under Bush.
Not stopping gun sales is the conservative dream. And by NRA logic, they wanted guns and would've got them one way or another.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal"Gun walking" or "letting guns walk" was a tactic whereby the ATF "purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders."...straw purchasing is not in itself illegal
First up, 2006:
Operation Wide Receiver
The suspicious sale of AR-15s led to Operation Wide Receiver.[33]
The first known ATF "gunwalking" operation to Mexican drug cartels, named Operation Wide Receiver, began in early 2006 and ran into late 2007. Licensed dealer Mike Detty of Mad Dawg Global informed the ATF of a suspicious gun purchase that took place in February 2006 in Tucson, Arizona. In March he was hired as a confidential informant working with the ATF's Tucson office, part of their Phoenix, Arizona field division.[33]
With the use of surveillance equipment, ATF agents monitored additional sales by Detty to straw purchasers. With assurance from ATF "that Mexican officials would be conducting surveillance or interdictions when guns got to the other side of the border",[12] Detty would sell a total of about 450 guns during the operation.[32] These included AR-15s, semi-automatic AK-pattern rifles, and Colt .38s. The majority of the guns were eventually lost as they moved into Mexico.
The Hernandez Case
Another, smaller probe occurred in 2007 under the same ATF Phoenix field division. The Fidel Hernandez case began when the ATF identified Mexican suspects who bought weapons from a Phoenix gun shop over a span of several months. The probe ultimately involved over 200 guns, a dozen of which were lost in Mexico. On September 27, 2007, ATF agents saw the original suspects buying weapons at the same store and followed them toward the Mexican border. The ATF informed the Mexican government when the suspects successfully crossed the border, but Mexican law enforcement were unable to track them.[4][10]
Less than two weeks later, on October 6, William Newell, then ATF's Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the Phoenix field division, shut down the operation at the behest of William Hoover, ATF's assistant director for the office of field operations.[36] No charges were filed. Newell, who was Phoenix ATF SAC from June 2006 to May 2011, would later play a major role in Operation Fast and Furious.[4][12]
Kind of throws a hole in the "Obama & Holder did it" theory, as well as the theory that they got all the Bush-era guns back. They did not. Second up:
Weapons recovered by Mexican military in Naco, Sonora, Mexico, 20 Nov 2009, including weapons bought two weeks earlier by Operation Fast and Furious suspect Uriel Patino who would buy 723 guns during the operation.
^ this debunks the idea that under Bush they were collaborating with the Mexicans but not under Obama. Both administrations collaborated with the Mexican military.
2009–2011: Operation Fast and Furious
On October 26, 2009, a teleconference was held at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. to discuss U.S. strategy for combating Mexican drug cartels. Participating in the meeting were Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer, ATF Director Kenneth E. Melson, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Michele Leonhart, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Robert Mueller and the top federal prosecutors in the Southwestern border states. They decided on a strategy to identify and eliminate entire arms trafficking networks rather than low-level buyers.[3][39][40] Those at the meeting did not suggest using the "gunwalking" tactic, but Phoenix ATF supervisors would soon use it in an attempt to achieve the desired goals.[41]
The strategy of targeting high-level individuals, which was already ATF policy, would be implemented by Bill Newell, special agent in charge of ATF's Phoenix field division. In order to accomplish it, the office decided to monitor suspicious firearms purchases which federal prosecutors had determined lacked sufficient evidence for prosecution, as laid out in a January 2010 briefing paper. This was said to be allowed under ATF regulations and given legal backing by U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona Dennis K. Burke. It was additionally approved and funded by a Justice Department task force.[3] However, long-standing DOJ and ATF policy has required suspected illegal arms shipments to be intercepted.[4][5]
Don't blame the Feds for the Phoenix ATF repeating dubious operations which were their own idea.
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