"I'd like to think this would be the impetus to reopen the F&F investigation, but it looks like that's fizzled out. Nobody got fired, and the contempt charges against Holder had no effect."
Heck, even the gun store is still in business.
"Can someone explain what Fast and Furious was outside the eerily true to life docu-drama series that Hollywood produced?"
Early in the new Obama administration 'somebody' (the attorney general/top law enforcement officer, but nothing yet proven) decided it would be a good idea to allow weapons to be illegally sold to persons both unable to legally purchase firearms, and likely to transport them into Mexico. There has been this long-running myth among American anti-gunners that our civilian gun market is responsible for all the guns used in Latin American crime (even though lawful government sales there have an even worse habit of showing up at cartel/government massacres, just as recently a week ago). So the idea was that the ATF would infiltrate this secret 'iron railroad' with arranged sales to likely gun smugglers, and follow them to the mothership or whatever, and...do something. Not only did they never do anything because they almost immediately lost track of the guns (they claim unintentionally, but the reality is the guns were simply allowed across the border), but years after the program started, Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed with one of the illegal-smuggled weapons in an assassination. To this day, there are recurring reports of F&F-related weapons turning up at crime scenes and cartel massacres, on both sides of the border.
Long story short; in an attempt to prove the existence of a mythical smuggling network, the ATF created one. The crassest among us would say this was the intention all along, as it was perfect justification for later gun controls implemented by the exact same agency responsible for the arms trafficking.
TCB
