"Gun show loopholes" are often cited (baselessly)as the cause for the proliferation of illegally-possessed firearms. These "loopholes" were also blamed for the existence of so many American firearms in Mexico. When Mexico's president Felipe Calderon came here recently to criticize us in front of our own legislature, he and President Obama worked on a policy to stop drug and weapons smuggling across the border.
But now we see that our government has been involved with smuggling U.S. weapons into Mexico via the
Phoenix-based "Operation Fast and Furious" since October 2009. CBS reported that the BATF was allowing smugglers to bring firearms into Mexico, then tracking the traffickers and arresting them. Or, that was the idea. (I'm a cynic, and
I presume that it has been done so that the Obama administration has "evidence" to use in further destruction of 2nd Amendment rights.) Obama says
neither he nor Attorney General Eric Holder authorized Operation Fast and Furious. Obama's excuse: It's “a pretty big government” with “a lot of moving parts.”
BATF agents like John Dodson had misgivings about this operation and felt that weapons would be allowed to "walk" and be in the hands of criminals on both sides of the border for years to come, never to be retrieved. When agents expressed their misgivings about aspects of the operation, they were met with unhelpful or hostile attitudes.
Internal agency memos show ATF supervisors dismissed the objections of agents in the Group VII strike force, insisting the prize of getting permission to run a wiretap and eventually rolling up a major gun or drug gang in Mexico merited the risks.There were even comments interpreted by the agents as veiled threats that they could lose their jobs if they didn’t fall in line.“This is a time we all need to pull together, not drift apart,” Group VII supervisor David J.Voth wrote to his strike force team in March 2010, acknowledging “there may be a schism developing amongst the group.”“If you don’t think this is fun you’re in the wrong line of work — period! This is the pinnacle of domestic U.S. law enforcement techniques. After this the tool box is empty,” Vothwrote.“Maybe the Maricopa County Jail is hiring detention officers and you can get paid $30,000 (instead of $100,000) to serve lunch to inmates all day.” (Solomon, Heath, Witkin; The Center for Public Integrity)
Dodson also said, “What we were doing in my opinion was wrong. It’s not what we do and for my agency to openly and publicly come in and deny we are doing it, I can’t even fathom it.”
In December 2010, Customs and Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was fatally shot north of the Arizona-Mexico border while attempting to arrest bandits targeting illegal aliens. Two weapons recovered at the crime scene were traced back to Operation Fast and Furious. On March 3, the BATF stated that neither weapon appeared to have been the one used to murder agent Terry, adding “At this time, we’re not aware of any forensic evidence that would link these guns to the homicide."
With direct blessing of BATF headquarters in Washington and supervision by the U.S. attorney’s office in Phoenix, a special BATF strike force known as Group VII was given permission to let federally licensed gun shops continue selling weapons to straw buyers already linked to a suspected Mexican gun running operation.Officials told the Center that BATF allowed about 1,765 firearms over the 15 months of the operation to pass from gun dealers to the suspected straw buyers that were the accomplices of the gun running ring. Another 233 weapons had been bought by the suspects prior to the BATF operation starting, bringing the total number of guns in the case to 1,998. Of those, 797 of the guns were eventually recovered as a result of criminal activity on both sides of the border — including 195 from inside Mexico — after they were used in crimes, collected during arrests, or interdicted through other law enforcement operations, the officials told the Center.
Supposedly Obama has ordered AG Holder to assign an investigator to this issue because he wants to know who authorized the operation.
Senator Chuck Grassley's attempts to get more information regarding the agencies involved in this operation have been
stonewalled. Grassley told the Center for Public Integrity that he now believes those representations are contradicted by the documents his staff has gathered and the testimony of agents like Dodson. “The Justice Department and the BATF put up a wall to mislead the American people and were less than forthcoming,” he said.
