ATF Project Gunrunner

Originally posted by alan
Concerning the foregoing, might I point out the following. The AFT, and it's criminal antics have been ongoing through administrations both Democratic as well as Republican.

Under either of the above, have ANY of the ridiculous federal gun laws been repealed? The answer is NO, none have been so treated. Matter fact, members of congress have, on an ongoing basis, bent over backwards to defend the ATF, notwithstanding its' antics, the nature of which are criminal, in my view. As I said in a recent, lengthy post, all manner of garbage has accumulated in the closet where legislation is found. A wholesale house cleaning, especially re firearms, is very long overdue, yet from the congress, that is the very last thing that one might reasonably expect, judging from the historical performance of The Congress, either Democratic or Republican controlled.
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I may be mistaken, but it is my understanding that while Fast and Furious had its origins in 2007, the straw purchasers were stopped and arrested and the guns confiscated when they tried to cross the border until the Obama administration took over in 2009.

Honestly, I think you're kind of missing my point. Even if Grassley and Issa don't give a hoot about the 2A rights of you and me, the potential damage that this scandal could have for the Democratic party is, IMHO, too valuable for them to let it get swept under the rug.

Will this whole ordeal strip away the overly broad regulatory powers that the ATF has been given unconstitutionally? I doubt it, that's probably something that we'll have to do through the courts. However, I do think that this whole thing may help us get rid of some rotten eggs so to speak.

This business of moving ATF responsibility for firearms enforcement to some other agency, AFT personnel too, would be tantamount to "mixing dirty water with clean water", action that creates more dirty water, it has been noted. Respecting moving ATF duties to the FBI, the following question comes to mind, and by the way, this question must be answered. Is the FBI all that clean? I doubt it, but I could be wrong. While the ATF is problematic, this coming from the antics and attitudes of its' management, in some cases, the individual agent is no damned good,the real problem, in my view, lies in and with the really abhorrent nature of the legislation it enforces, this Viorginia falling under the purview of The Congress.
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Herein lies the problem, the ATF isn't going to just go away. There will always be some federal gun laws and someone is going to enforce it. While I agree that the FBI is far from perfect, I do think that they're a lot better than the ATF is. As I said before, I think that because the FBI has a wider range of responsibilities, they're less likely to engage in the antics of the ATF simply because they've got better things to do. I think that part of the reason that the ATF so aggressively pursues so much of what they do is because they're trying to justify their own existence. It's difficult to get funding if you're not doing much (which the ATF probably wouldn't if they didn't spend so much time trying to turn people into criminals), so you manufacture something to justify the funding. I just don't foresee this being as big a problem with the FBI.
 
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We should be demanding more than a shuffling of the deck.

Tom Servo wrote:

True, but know which members can make a difference. Traver's being groomed for a position as acting director, which does not require confirmation through the Senate Judiciary Committee.

These are the guys who control the actual budget, and who can put real pressure on the ATF. Of course, a quick glance at the roster shows why the ATF continues to enjoy budget increases year by year.

Excellent point, Tom. An acting director would mean that the administration successfully circumvented the confirmation process and got another one of their operatives in position. Traver is bad news!

As to your second point about de-funding the ATF, I would say that is most important at this time. However, as you rightly observe, looking at that list is downright depressing! Every single Democrat is a known anti-gun zealot and the members from the other team, the Dead Elephant Party, are not much better....RINO's all of them.

I still say there should be a lot of political hay to made from this scandal and Holder should be next on the chopping block. If it drags on long enough, as I expect that may be part of the strategy now, the Obamamessiah is going to have a hard go of getting away from this mess....and that is a good thing.
 
True, but know which members can make a difference. Traver's being groomed for a position as acting director, which does not require confirmation through the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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Absolutely correct, Sir. But it don't hurt to start a preemptive maneuver to back us up. As long as the members are aware of the public's feeling about Mr. Traver, his chances of keeping the job go down.
 
Originally posted by Tom Servo
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A scandal can be very valuable politically and we're not all that far away from the 2012 election.
I wish I shared your optimism, but memories are very short. I had a guy shouting at me the other day about how "they" were going to take his guns any day now, and that we never should have elected the current President.

When I asked him who he voted for, he said, "the other guy." OK, which "other guy?" He couldn't remember who ran on the Republican ticket less than three years ago.

As such, it would be quite a stretch for him to remember (for him) a minor political scandal that never made the evening news. Heck, he probably won't even get off the couch long enough to go vote.

They are trying to brush this under the rug by firing Melson. This whole situation has probably reached its apex for media exposure. Barring any sudden, drastic revelations, I really don't see it getting much traction in terms of Joe Sixpack's perception.

I hope I'm wrong.
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So long as Grassley and Issa keep fighting the stonewalling, I think they could probably drag it out until the next election if they want to. I agree that if the whole thing was over with tomorrow, it may very well fade from public memory by next November. If this thing kept going and really intensified in September or October of 2012, I think it could be political gold for the Republicans. Things like this often take a while and I think that the timing of this reflects that. Remember, the Lewinski sex scandal dragged on from January of 1998 until February of 1999 and Watergate went on from June of 1972 until August of 1974.
 
...and the backlash begins. From the Washington Post:

At the briefing last year, bureau officials laid out for Issa and other members of Congress from both parties details of several ATF investigations, including Fast and Furious, the sources said. For that program, the briefing covered how many guns had been bought by “straw purchasers,’’ the types of guns and how much money had been spent, said one source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the briefing was not public.

“All of the things [Issa] has been screaming about, he was briefed on,’’ said one source familiar with the session.
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The cornered bear is lashing out by attacking the credibility of its critics. This is to be expected, and frankly, the timing seems about right.

This isn't likely to derail the investigation, but it casts a pallor over it that might change how sympathetic the media is to Issa.
 
Re those who might be "thrown under the bus", I believe that a likely listing of "sacrificial lambs", would read pretty much as follows.

Melson/Traver, Holder, the "thrower" being Obama. After Holder, who knows.
 
MSNBC finally posted a story on Fast and the Furious, only after they found a way to spin it in a "gun stores are bad and gun laws are too lax" way.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43487612/ns/us_news-christian_science_monitor/

The Wilson Center’s Olson says the tragedy of Fast and Furious is that it, too, was aimed at addressing a problem that until a few years ago received little attention.

“All of a sudden a few years ago there was a lot of attention to this problem of straw purchasers, the people with clean records that the traffickers send into the gun stores to make their purchases,” he says.

“The intent of Fast and Furious was to get at that problem, and beyond that to try to somehow get at the network of traffickers,” Olson says. “The intent at least was a noble one, but according to all the reports it got way out of hand.”
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:barf::barf::barf::barf::barf::barf:
 
The Washington Post says that Congress was briefed on the operation, but did that briefing include the part about letting the guns walk? That was what was new in the program, and the Post suggests that ATF told Congress, but not the administration or DOJ. Hmmm....

Justice Department officials have said the operation was approved by ATF’s Phoenix field office and the U.S. attorney’s office in Phoenix. The department’s inspector general is investigating allegations that Justice and ATF allowed nearly 2,500 guns to flow illegally into Mexico as part of the program.
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So the US attorney and ATF field office out in Phoenix were busy making US foreign policy with Mexico, but were not consulting their superiors back in Washington? Uh huh. Not credible.

For nearly a year, agents tracked guns they suspected might end up in the hands of Mexican cartels. But several ATF agents testified before Issa’s committee last week that they were ordered not to stop people they suspected had illegal guns.
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I thought the whole problem here was that they did NOT track the guns, and that is why we do not know where most of them are today. According to Congressional testimony, they allowed the straw sales, recorded the serial numbers, then waited for the guns to turn up at crime scenes. That is not "tracking" the guns if you ask me.
 
NRA magazine showed up in the mail yesterday. Wayne LaPierre's column proposes exactly the scenario that I have suspected: there never was any infrastructure in place to track these guns once they crossed the border (and, in fact, the BATFE guys down Mexico way weren't even in the loop), so the cover story about hoping to follow the guns to drug kingpins is pure lie.

IMHO, and it appears Wayne agrees, the real goal was nothing other than to ensure that more guns bought illegally in the U.S. could be tied to crimes in Mexico, thus justifying harsher gun control laws here in the U.S.

Think about it for maybe 15 seconds, and it's too transparent to miss.
 
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IMHO, and it appears Wayne agrees, was nothing other than to ensure that more guns bought illegally in the U.S. could be tied to crimes in Mexico, thus justifying harsher gun control laws here in the U.S.

Think about it for maybe 15 seconds, and it's too transparent to miss.
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I never had any doubt that this was the case all along. I can't buy that the ATF is quite stupid enough to think that such a hair-brained plan would work the way they said it was supposed to.
 
I can't buy that the ATF is quite stupid enough to think that such a hair-brained plan would work the way they said it was supposed to.
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The problem with these people are they think they are smart enough to work the system.


We have guns bought in the USA turning up at crime scenes in Mexico. It has to be because of our lax gun laws. We need to tighten the gun laws.

No, we need to ATF to do their job, as it is CURRENTLY prescribed. I may not like all the laws, but when the agency that is supposed to enforce them, breaks the rules, how the heck am I supposed to be confident that I can play by the rules.

I wonder if Mellons resignation will end it all, or if they will get someone from the DOJ also? Hopefully, if they can get these guys indicted, one of them will start singing and bring down the whole house of cards.
 
Google "Media Matters" "Fast and Furious" and ATF and you'll get lots of links describing the ATF talking points against Issa which are basically:

1. The real problem here is weak gun laws, not this program.
2. Poor ATF lacks resources (while of course neglecting to mention that in 1994, 2,500 agents were responsible for 284,000 FFLs. In 2010, 2,500 agents are responsible for 60,000 FFLs.)
3. Darrell Issa knew about this all along and he was OK with it.
4. The idea that this was done to promote gun control as policy is ridiculous conspiracy theory on par with birtherism.

As you can see, they studiously avoid discussing whether the operation was a good idea because it is so obviouslly stupid that they don't dare have that discussion - and naturally, they don't have the least interest in discovering who was responsible for such a poorly conceived operation.

However, Fox and the NY Post have now come right out and said that this was pretty clearly not about law enforcement. Several other news organizations are starting to gently hint at it in their reporting.

And in other news, Rep. Issa's staffer has assurred the media that the investigations will continue and that Melson's resignation (if true) is the beginning of this story, not the end.

So I think the jab at Issa in the Post is mostly just a desparate attempt to try and get him to accept Melson's resignation as an appropriate sacrifice and let the whole thing slide... but I don't see that happening.
 
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Yeah, alloy ..... it used to be the job of the free press to point these things out. Nowadays, they seem to be a cheerleading section for Our Dear Reader.
 
Anderson Cooper did the story pretty straight last night. Implied that the buck stopped higher up and that was being covered up.

BTW, if some of the critics did know before - an empirical question - nail them also.
 
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