How do you go from pushing Congress for a permanent assault weapons ban to letting military-style guns “walk” into the hands of Mexican drug cartels? If you are U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, extreme swings in regulation aren’t just costing gun sellers peace of mind – they are costing lives on both sides of the border.
On February 25, 2009, Eric Holder told reporters that he believed a permanent assault weapons ban was needed in part to stem the tide of guns flowing into the Mexican drug war. The newly minted U.S. Attorney General said at the time, “I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum.”
Later in 2009, Holder’s underlings blew a hole in that argument. Following common sense, Arizona gun store owners contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to report suspicious buyers. Some paid with cash for expensive guns; others brought paper bags to conceal their purchases.
The response from ATF was bewildering. Brad Desaye, owner of J & G Gun Sales in Prescott, AZ, repeatedly asked ATF agents for direction on selling guns to suspicious buyers. “[W]e would say – ‘Do you want us to stop selling? Is there something we should do here?’ And they would say ‘No, no, no – continue selling – just tell us after the fact,’” Desaye told Fox News.
The reason ATF agents didn’t want to stop the sale of guns was novel: By letting the guns “walk” across the border, ATF officials could nab bigger criminals in Mexican drug cartels. Thus were born Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious, joint operations between ATF and Holder’s Justice Department.
Conducted in 2010, Fast and Furious made a mockery of the ban Holder said he wanted to reinstate. Unable to get Congress to make the assault weapons ban permanent, Holder and ATF went to the other extreme: actively encouraging gun store owners to sell hundreds of guns to known straw buyers for Mexican drug cartels.
No comments:
Post a Comment