The next time gun-control advocates point to violence in Mexico and call for more restrictions on gun sales or a revived assault-weapons ban, they should consider that the problem may not be with the laws on the books, but with those who enforce them.
A number of outlets — among them CBS News, the L.A. Times, and the Center for Public Integrity — have alleged scandalous behavior at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) is investigating allegations that ATF supervisors ordered agents to let gun runners ship arms across the border. Two of those guns turned up in a gunfight that killed a Border Patrol agent.
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ATF special agent John Dodson says that agents in the Phoenix office were ordered to let known gun traffickers purchase firearms. The plan, Operation Fast and Furious, was intended to help investigators follow low-level gunrunners to cartel leadership. That may justify letting a few illegal sales slip by, but agents say the number soon climbed into the hundreds and thousands.
Agents raised warnings to their superiors about the quantity of sales and the rising violence across the border, but were told that the operation had been approved at ATF headquarters. They were also told that if they didn’t like it, they were welcome to seek employment at the Maricopa County jail as detention officers making $30,000 a year.
Dodson came forward after hearing that two of the guns showed up at a crime scene, a remote valley where Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed in an exchange of fire. Dodson gave an emotional on-camera interview to CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson, clearly disturbed by Terry’s murder.
The ATF’s alleged malfeasance is all the more disturbing when considered in the context of the Mexican drug war. The problem, however, is not legal U.S. gun dealers.
The media — for example, Reuters — have widely reported that “nine out of ten guns” found at Mexican crime scenes came from U.S. gun dealers, but this claim has been debunked: The statistic takes into account only guns traced by the FBI. Such tracing is possible only if the Mexican authorities submit a weapon to the FBI, and they submit only weapons designed for the U.S. civilian market (the only kind of gun the FBI is equipped to trace). Once all guns retrieved in Mexico are included, only 17 percent come from U.S. gun dealers.
There are plenty of places for the cartels to buy guns other than the U.S. retail market. A goodly portion of weapons trotted out for the press cannot be legally purchased in the U.S. without the ATF’s say-so and approval from the local chief law-enforcement officer (short-barreled rifles, for example). Rocket-propelled grenades and newly manufactured machine guns are not available at gun shows. Further gun control imposed on typical American buyers would have no effect on the ability of the cartels to purchase these military-grade weapons.
To acquire such weapons, the cartels put up recruiting billboards to persuade Mexican soldiers and police officers to leave their posts, and thousands have done so with weapons in hand. Past wars in Latin America have also created a healthy black market that the cartels can tap into. There remains the question of U.S. arms exports, but these, when legal, are monitored by the State Department.
Congress should be able to assume that the gun-control laws already on the books are being enforced. That does not seem to be the case. Congress should find out why, and the public should bear it in mind next time Attorney General Holder or Mexican president Felipe Calderón says that a new assault-weapons ban is necessary.
— David Rittgers is an attorney and a legal-policy analyst at the Cato Institute.
Mr. Rittgers: It is not our job to help Mexico enforce its laws on the importation of goods and services. Moreover, Mexican citizens (by their votes) have chosen to disarm themselves, and so have chosen to put themselves at risk. That is because criminals don't obey laws and they have chosen not to disarm themselves. Mexican have to come to realize that. Until they do, there will carnage in Mexico.
I served with Agent Terry when we were both in the same platoon in Italy during our Marine Corps careers, so this whole situation really infuriates me. Someone I knew personally, served side by side with, is dead because of the ineptitude of our own government. Killed on American soil by a gun that government officials purposely allowed to get into criminal hands in Mexico.
And I don't believe for a single minute that they let these guns go "to track them to the big fish". No, they let them go, and encouraged these illegal transactions, to increase the number of guns sold "illegally" so they could push for more stringent gun control laws against law-abiding US citizens.
It is fun to blame guns in Mexico on America, but I suspect that if a drug cartel decides to outfit a few dozen gunmen with brand new fully automatic AK47's plus a gold plated one for the boss, they will do so. They will get them from whomever has them. That's why they like having millions in profit, so they get what want want. You can't get a real assault rifle at a US gun store anyway, just a semiautomatic look alike. As for legal guns that end up being exported, at least we are exporting something to put a dent in the balance of trade with Mexican drugs coming this way.
American Government Complicit in Smuggling W e a p o n s Used to K i l l Border Patrol Agent
Confirmed:
Our treasonous rulers have deliberately allowed American guns to be smuggled into Mexico,
possibly so that Obama can use their presence there to undermine the Second Amendment.
An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms senior agent assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010,
federal agent John] Dodson's job is to stop gun trafficking across the border.
Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen.
It wasn't a one-off incident:
"I'm boots on the ground in Phoenix, telling you we've been doing it every day since I've been here," he said.
"Here I am. Tell me I didn't do the things that I did. Tell me you didn't order me to do the things I did.
Tell me it didn't happen. Now you have a name on it.
You have a face to put with it. Here I am. Someone now, tell me it didn't happen."
Agent Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved
all the way up to the Justice Department.
The ATF not only allowed the smuggling, but videotaped it —
making government denials utterly implausible.
Documents show the inevitable result:
The guns that ATF let go began showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. …
Dodson feels that ATF was partly to blame for the escalating violence in Mexico and on the border.
"I even asked them if they could see the correlation between the two," he said.
"The more our guys buy, the more violence we're having down there."
Senior agents including Dodson told CBS News they confronted their supervisors over and over.
Their answer,
according to Dodson, was, "If you're going to make an omelette, you've got to break some eggs."
Sound familiar?
Walter Duranty used the same expression while whitewashing
Stalin's genocide in the New York Times.
It has now been confirmed that Border Patrol agent Brian Terry,
who came under fire by some illegal aliens while providing free police services to others,
was killed with weapons put in enemy hands by our own rogue government
as part of the ATF's Eric Holder-approved "Fast and Furious" program.
Terry himself was armed with beanbag rounds.
We wouldn't want border agents injuring any potential Democrat voters.
A country that allows itself to be run by people who do not mean it well will not long survive.
The root of the problem is NOT the federal undercover operation. While they do need to answer for their idiocy, these types of operations are common. The REAL crime here was sending Agent Terry into a situation that his superiors MUST have known was dangerous, and failing to see that he was adequately armed and supported.
Dan Davis hit the nail on the head. The Obama administration, and quite possibly prior administrations, are guilty, without a doubt, of manufacturing a crisis in order to press for a solution often called "gun control".
No more can American Citizens accept this notion that government issued permission slips "allowing" the exercise of inalienable rights are the right and proper way. They are not for our safety, see Brian Terry for evidence of that, and they really are the very kind of infringement the Second Amendment was recognized, enumerated, in order to stop government from imposing.
This scandal is bigger than WaterGate and it is time the mainstream media admit it, cover it accurately and see the chips fall where they may. Enough is Enough.
I hope this article is a sign of things to come. Frank and straightforward reporting is needed and this is a good example of what has to happen. Liberty and Lives are at stake.
Cross border gun trafficking has major emotional components. Our law enforcement officers pay with their lives.
Our agency leaders must boil it down to a series of issues and attack those issues with greatest likelihood of success. Starting point is, the Second Amendment Right to Bear Arms is clear per the Supreme Court.
First point, is there a law to question multiple gun purchases in a given time frame, without a dealer/collector license? What number is good to start with? This unties law enforcement and gun dealers.
Second, law enforcement must clearly and often state straw purchases are criminal enterprise. Legal purchase of a gun is not criminal enterprise.
Attack the crime committed not the legal purchase.
Third, recognize the 6000 per day smuggling of guns quoted by reporters
to include Reuters is moved across open borders and through government customs border crossings manned by both countries.
Ask gun advocacy groups how they what to stop their members from being killed as law enforcement agents ensuring citizen safety. A answer of no is no answer anymore.
Complexity comes from inserting politics. It is time the people are charged with our security and safety have responsible tools available.
We don't need no stinting Mexico. I frankly think that our precious, enlightened, God-given Second Amendment entitles each and every American Citizen (and probably non-citizen resident) to have as much weaponry as needed to oveturn the government.
Of course, I have Libya in mind. If only Libya had a Second Amendment, its citizens could have offed Gadhaffi a long time ago. Some of them are trying to do that now, but mere automatic weapons are not enough.
Thus, it is only true and right and justice that each American be equipped with machine guns, surface to air missiles, dirty nukes, and whatever else it would take to toss out the gubmint, if ever it transgressed on our rights. Not that it has ever happened, by golly, but who knows?
For this purpose, I propose a new program, which we can call ArmaCare (by analogy to ObamaCare). Ideally the gubmint would require us to have all the weapons we need to overthrow it, but that would be socialistic, and we're not socialists are at NRO. Besides, it's kinda illogical.
Instead, I propose a law that requires each and every American to be armed according to some minimum standard of armaments. That would include automatic weapons, missiles, nukes, and abortion implements (gotta please those feminists).
Anyone who doesn't buy the necessary level or armaments, via private suppliers of course, would be penalized $500 to be collected by the IRS.
It's True. It's Right. It's Justice. And by golly, it's our Second Amendment.
Thanks for this clear-headed analysis of yet another one of our government's clumsy attempts to manufacture a crisis.
The so-called “90 percent” problem – that almost all of the crime guns in Mexico come from U.S. licensed dealers or gun shows – has now been thoroughly debunked.
With the latest revelations about Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious, it is becoming clear that there has been an orchestrated conspiracy within the Obama Administration to create this crisis for the sole purpose of imposing greater restrictions on American citizens' Constitutional rights to armed self-defense.
The Congress must pursue this investigation. There must be accountability. The American People must know what their elected officials have perpetrated in the name of an ideology and in the pursuit of greater power.
Government is no more empowered to compel us to buy or own firearms than it is ban us from doing so. It is not within it's power to make such decisions. See, that power has been specifically removed from its authority. That is what makes it a right. Kinda like, ummmmm, the First Amendment. "The Second Amendment is no different."
Please read Heller versus D.C. to see that quote and the next one. Try it, you might learn something.
"The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all."
"That may justify letting a few illegal sales slip by, but agents say the number soon climbed into the hundreds and thousands."
David, that's all the proof I need right there. This operation was clearly meant to boost the number of black rifles heading south of the border.
The top brass clearly knew they were letting more guns through than they could reliably track, building cases against high-level bosses along the way. The timeline of this operation dovetails beautifully with the initial, fallacious Eric Holder 90% claim and his call for a renewed, permanent Assault Weapons Ban.
How about we get the NRA to force the government to release the names of the people who started this program. I'll bet it will lead back to the anti gun anti 2nd amendment trouble makers. Make them responsible and accountable.
Follow the link to Obama's push for a new AW ban. This was the setup when the great Hillary flamed out on the FNCs Greta show. Remember the table of bogus guns offered up as proof? This was nothing more than to try and make it so.
And now the new sporting test shotgun bans which are in the works.
The Second Amendment is not about sports, as the SC said in the Heller decision it's about citizen's right to defend themselves.
