ATF Project Gunrunner

Related to the above, and how felons were able to purchase 100's of firearms after getting a go from NICS

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...r-background-checks-werent-conducted-on-fast/

Congressional and law-enforcement sources say the situation suggests the FBI, which operates the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, knowingly allowed the purchases to go forward after consulting with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which initiated Operation Fast and Furious.
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maestro pistolero said:
My point, really, is that if the program emanated from high up in the command structure, it would be surprising to me if it were isolated, and limited to 1800 guns.

Certainly if not outed, there would be more. I don't know how many it would take to "back in" to their 90% number, later revised to 70%. But the program does support political motives, generally and specifically.
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It is almost certainly much more than 1800 guns, or 2500 guns.
Remember we now have knowledge that Tampa was doing this via Honduras and State was feeding the beast via commercial sales. It would not be unreasonable to expect the same program was being run out of both the Dallas and Houston offices, probably the New Mexico office and others as well (San Diego? Huntsville?). Until we get someone on the inside to chime in on the scope, we'll probably never know for sure. But it will make future "stats" about the number of US guns in Mexico very suspect.
 
If guns are being illegally exported....does DHS gain some measures of Patriot Act authority they don't have normally, that they currently consider important...enough to insure that guns are continually being exported, so they can retain that authority?

If a straw sale is allowed to proceed, does anyone gain access to store records they wouldn't normally have, or do they have that authority already...with no evidence of any straw purchase?

In other words, are perpetual straw purchases, followed by the supposed illegal exporting of same weapons, ancillary toward maintaining some continual effort, and that effort's required legal authority...rendering stories of drugs, felons, borders, murders etc. almost an undesirable, yet necessary side effect?

Has the long gun reporting act(and possibly more) been in effect much longer than anyone thought?
 
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However, according to court records reviewed by Fox News, two of the 20 defendants indicted in the Fast and Furious investigation have felony convictions and criminal backgrounds that experts say, at the very least, should have delayed them buying a single firearm. Instead, the duo bought dozens of guns on multiple occasions while federal officials watched on closed-circuit cameras.
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Some folks at the ATF and FBI need to go to jail over this one. :mad:
 
Alloy said:
In other words, are perpetual straw purchases and illegal exporting of weapons, ancillary toward maintaining some other effort and authority, rendering drugs, felons, borders, murder etc. almost a secondary issue?
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You took the long way around the bush asking that question. What I think you're really asking is by exporting guns to cartels, is the gov't providing an "excuse" to broaden the powers of alphabet-soup agencies? And could those broader powers also be used against US citizens?

My answer is: Of course.
If DHS can claim exigent circumstances along the border due to higher levels of muder, kidnappings, shootings and general mayhem it could lead to expanded authority or new laws allowing them to seize people or property based on otherwise legal behavior.

We've already seen some of this with CBP (customs & border protection) claiming that they can seize your property if you try to cross the border with a "large sum" of cash. What defines large sum is nebulous and probably varies to allow "discretion" on the part of CBP agents. They could expand that authority to people travelling "near" the border (where near is also nebulous).

Even today, it doesn't take much to imagine a nightmare scene. Suppose three Americans of Hispanic heritage decide to drive from Brownsville over to New Mexico or Arizona for a 3-gun match. When authorities stop them and uncover the 9, 10 or 12 firearms and ammo in the vehicle, I doubt it will be end well. If DHS is involved, I doubt they'll see their guns returned without legal assistance and a lot of sweat and treasure expended.
 
I edited my post again....sorry

I'm curious if the laws can be logically backed thru so that the end justifies the means.
Has the long gun reporting act(and possibly more) been in effect much longer than anyone thought?
 
If DHS can claim exigent circumstances along the border due to higher levels of muder, kidnappings, shootings and general mayhem it could lead to expanded authority or new laws allowing them to seize people or property based on otherwise legal behavior.
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Ive never seen so many agencies, exhibit such clown shoe behavior, and everybody has a CYA card it seems. The FBI allowing sales to 2 bit felons?
Strange days I guess.
 
BillCA....sorry, but I'm not sure what I'm asking because I don't know how these laws or the FFL business flows.

by exporting guns to cartels, is the gov't providing an "excuse" to broaden the powers of alphabet-soup agencies? And could those broader powers also be used against US citizens?
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But that's about it in a nutshell.:)

If a sale to a known or suspected felon is allowed to go thru, because it might be illegally exported, does one agency then have claim to usurp all the records of the other agency? For instance 4473s.

Could a comprehensive list be compiled over time under the umbrella of Nat Security?

As an aside, Todd Tiahrt was interviewed on Fox news a few days ago, he suggests Fast and Furious was designed to(among other things) aid in the repeal the Tiahrt amendment.:)

What would they do over there at ATF? Would they be needed anymore, I wonder.
 
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If a straw sale is allowed to proceed, does anyone gain access to store records they wouldn't normally have, or do they have that authority already...with no evidence of any straw purchase?
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Yep, the ATF does. They can initiate a trace for pretty much any reason.

However, there's little concern about access to 4473's being used as a registry. For the most part, the only time a gun is specifically reported to the ATF is in conjunction with a multiple-handgun sale form. Otherwise, the records are kept by the dealer. The very system dealers use makes it very hard to simply find John Smith's guns.

Dealers' books are organized by the date the gun was received. For example, the acquisition log will show something like this:

07/25/2011 / Glock / 19 / 9mm / RAB455 / Glock USA, Smyrna, Ga.
07/26/2011 / S&W / 686 / .357 / CEB123 / AcuSport, Bellefontaine, Oh.

When each gun is sold, the dealer fills out the customer's information in the "disposition" column. However, the books are organized by acquisition, so the only real way to audit them is by the date the guns were received.

Essentially, there's no quick way to look at the dealer's records and determine which guns John Smith bought. I'd have to go down the list, line by line, and depending on how long the dealer's been in business, that could be tens of thousands of entries.

And that assumes the dealer is still in business. If not, the books (and the forms) get boxed up and sent to an ATF warehouse, in which there are tens of millions of entries to consider. Assuming the ATF has a complete cache of those records, it's still a nightmare to track anything down because they're prohibited by both law and logistics from collating those records into any kind of database.

An de facto registry won't come from that infrastructure. It would have to entail a whole new reporting system, and even then, the registry would only be accurate from the date of inception. Guns bought before then wouldn't be in it.

Now, a new reporting requirement (like the one they tried in the border states) could force the registry of some weapons, but I think that could be proven to be a violation of the Tiahrt Amendment.
 
Assuming the ATF has a complete cache of those records, it's still a nightmare to track anything down because they're prohibited by both law and logistics from collating those records into any kind of database.

An de facto registry won't come from that infrastructure. It would have to entail a whole new reporting system, and even then, the registry would only be accurate from the date of inception. Guns bought before then wouldn't be in it.

Now, a new reporting requirement (like the one they tried in the border states) could force the registry of some weapons, but I think that could be proven to be a violation of the Tiahrt Amendment.
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Got it.
It's over my head but I see the pieces.
Thanks guys!
 
Tom, I think the risk might be more profound than you are acknowledging. Yes, if one were manually searching the 4473's of individual mom and pop gun shops, it would be problematic to create a comprehensive registry of guns by owner.

But a list need not be comprehensive to be dangerous. And you can get pretty damn near comprehensive if you just go after the big shops that sell hundreds of firearms a month.

And you don't have to manually record these transactions if you copy the 4473's and pay some contract employees $12/hr to type each one into an Oracle database (in contravention of federal law, but it certainly doesn't appear that BATF is paying much attention to that these days!).

This has all the shape, form and function of a prototype - a pilot program that is being tested for eventual deployment nationwide. No, they can't compile a perfect list with this approach - but they can certainly cast a broad net.
 
Tom Servo said:
Essentially, there's no quick way to look at the dealer's records and determine which guns John Smith bought. I'd have to go down the list, line by line, and depending on how long the dealer's been in business, that could be tens of thousands of entries.
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Tom, aren't dealers now allowed to keep electronic records that would allow a search on a field, thus making it much easier to find those firearms bought by a specific buyer?
 
csmsss said:
"And you don't have to manually record these transactions if you copy the 4473's and pay some contract employees $12/hr to type each one into an Oracle database (in contravention of federal law, but it certainly doesn't appear that BATF is paying much attention to that these days!).

"This has all the shape, form and function of a prototype - a pilot program that is being tested for eventual deployment nationwide. No, they can't compile a perfect list with this approach - but they can certainly cast a broad net."

I believe you are on to something here. This is an agency that has been notorious for playing fast and loose with the rules. ...er put less charitably, they violate the law as a standard way of doing business.

Nebulous practices, gray areas of the law, exigent circumstances, bend the rules to attain a desired result and on and on. I suspect that many folks, including members of this very forum have allowed themselves to believe that agents of government are acting with the best interests of the people in mind. Me? Not so much.

If this scandal does nothing else but open up the eyes of those willfully ignorant citizens then it will have served some positive purpose. That is at the minimum. I hope for greater results than that. To include; criminal prosecutions of those involved, jail sentences and loss of pension for those convicted of criminal wrong-doing, an end to the ATF (I'm sure I am dreaming), removal from office of Holder, no hope for re-election of Obama and eternal shame for many of his Chicago cronies. That list would be a nice start. What can I say? I think big.
 
Tom, aren't dealers now allowed to keep electronic records that would allow a search on a field, thus making it much easier to find those firearms bought by a specific buyer?
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They are, but they're in the minority. Sure, it would be possible to make a database of some sort, but it would be very incomplete.

As far as typing in hundreds of millions of 4473's, imagine the time and payroll. I'm not saying it isn't possible, but it seems like a great deal of effort for a very meager result.
 
As far as typing in hundreds of millions of 4473's, imagine the time and payroll. I'm not saying it isn't possible, but it seems like a great deal of effort for a very meager result.
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There is a lot of software out in the world that could do much of this quickly and easily..... Certainly some portion of the forms would require human eyes but alot would not.
 
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