Fast and Furious ... What the ?

[FriendlyFire]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#47989040

Basicly: Right now, thousand of assault rifles are being sold legally and making there way into the hand of criminals while the Federal government cant do jack due to state laws.
And the Republicans are saying Obama was allowing a lax gun laws enforcement, in order to stop 2nd admendment rights because the Federal government cant do jack due to state laws.

Fast and Furious was an operation by ATF agents to stop LEGAL gun sales by straw purchasers. Which was not successful because they were unable to gather enough evidence stop the sales due to the very very lax guns laws.
Mind is blown.

EDIT: Seriously. it is LEGAL in Az to buy 50x AK47 assault rifles and then exit the store and sell them to someone.
Because of this legal law and practice of buying massive amounts of firearms, the ATF who tried to monitor and gather evidence were unable to prosecute anyone



/facepalm

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I like the sound of MexiGunGate.

 

[Core Imposter]

Assault rifles are necessary to protect American citizens from the Federal government and from the mob.

 

[FriendlyFire]

the truth about the fast and furious scandal

voth's mandate was to stop gun traffickers in arizona, the state ranked by the gun-control advocacy group legal community against violence as having the nation's "weakest gun violence prevention laws." just 200 miles from mexico, which prohibits gun sales, the phoenix area is home to 853 federally licensed firearms dealers. billboards advertise volume discounts for multiple purchases.

customers can legally buy as many weapons as they want in arizona as long as they're 18 or older and pass a criminal background check. There are no waiting periods and no need for permits, and buyers are allowed to resell the guns. "in arizona," says voth, "someone buying three guns is like someone buying a sandwich."

by 2009 the sinaloa drug cartel had made phoenix its gun supermarket and recruited young americans as its designated shoppers or straw purchasers. Voth and his agents began investigating a group of buyers, some not even old enough to buy beer, whose members were plunking down as much as $20,000 in cash to purchase up to 20 semiautomatics at a time, and then delivering the weapons to others.

Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the atf repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the atf intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in fast and furious tell fortune that the atf had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: they say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws which stymied them at every turn.,


fortune reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential atf documents and interviewed 39 people, including seven law-enforcement agents with direct knowledge of the case. Several, including voth, are speaking out for the first time.


It was nearly impossible in arizona to bring a case against a straw purchaser. The federal prosecutors there did not consider the purchase of a huge volume of guns, or their handoff to a third party, sufficient evidence to seize them. A buyer who certified that the guns were for himself, then handed them off minutes later, hadn't necessarily lied and was free to change his mind. even if a suspect bought 10 guns that were recovered days later at a mexican crime scene, this didn't mean the initial purchase had been illegal. to these prosecutors, the pattern proved little. Instead, agents needed to link specific evidence of intent to commit a crime to each gun they wanted to seize.

none of the atf agents doubted that the fast and furious guns were being purchased to commit crimes in mexico. But that was nearly impossible to prove to prosecutors' satisfaction. And agents could not seize guns or arrest suspects after being directed not to do so by a prosecutor. (agents can be sued if they seize a weapon against prosecutors' advice. In this case, the agents had a particularly strong obligation to follow the prosecutors' direction given that fast and furious had received a special designation under the justice department's organized crime drug enforcement task force. That designation meant more resources for the case, but it also provided that prosecutors take the lead role.)

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/27/fast-and-furious-truth/

Mind blown.
Republicans ..... literally caused the very thing, they accuse Obama of, why am I not surpised.

 

[Snorrius]

EDIT: Seriously. it is LEGAL in Az to buy 50x AK47 assault rifles and then exit the store and sell them to someone.
Because of this legal law and practice of buying massive amounts of firearms, the ATF who tried to monitor and gather evidence were unable to prosecute anyone

It seems USA is still has a hope. At least you are not surrending your liberties as fast as UKians do.

 

[Crezth]

Assault rifles are necessary to protect American citizens from the Federal government and from the mob.

Now we only need a way to deal with the B-2's and ballistic missiles.

 

[Synobun]

Wouldn't mind this lax law for Canada.

 

[JohnRM]

The purchase and private transfer of rifles is not a federal crime.

Also, the AK-47s in question are not assault rifles. They are semi-automatic weapons.

 

[Farm Boy]

Well, that's a new presentation of how things went with that. Maybe, since things are so clear cut, AG Holder should surrender all the facts of the case for oversight so we can work on moving past this ordeal? Or is it entirely more likely that how things actually played out is somewhere in between the "facts" on both sides of this partisan tirade?

 

[Formaldehyde]

The purchase and private transfer of rifles is not a federal crime.

So it's perfectly fine for US citizens in Arizona and elsewhere to equip Mexican criminals with dangerous firearms, but it is heinous crime when the ATF tries to stop it from occurring in their own typically incompetent way?

Wouldn't it then be the Republicans who are trying to get the Second Amendment banned according to the conspiracy theorists?

Also, the AK-47s in question are not assault rifles. They are semi-automatic weapons.

You mean the weapon anybody can convert to full-auto with even a twist tie and a file?

 

[MobBoss]

Also, the AK-47s in question are not assault rifles. They are semi-automatic weapons.

Lots of the worlds 'assault rifles' are semi-automatic. So, I dont get this answer. At all.

 

[Core Imposter]

Now we only need a way to deal with the B-2's and ballistic missiles.

INDs/improvised nuclear devices....

 

[IdiotsOpposite]

INDs/improvised nuclear devices....

Surely even you can see that giving nuclear capability to your average Joe Blow on the street would be the worst possible decision a President can make.

 

[JtheJackal]

So the government never gave guns to criminals only "let" guns go to criminals because they legally couldn't and this is the scandal? The real scandal is the lies that got us to congressional investigations.

 

[warpus]

Assault rifles are necessary to protect American citizens from the Federal government

That's rich

The American government has tanks and crap

 

[kramerfan86]

I dont quite understand why Obama is so determined to stand behind this guy, this program was an incredible botchup that has more than likely led to a considerable number of deaths.

 

[Formaldehyde]

A program which he apparently had no direct involvement, just like Bush and his attorney general had nothing to do with Operation Wide Receiver and similar probes?

The ATF is frequently notoriously incompetent. Just look at Waco and Ruby Ridge.

 

[kramerfan86]

A program which he apparently had no direct involvement?, just like Bush and his attorney general had nothing to do with Operation Wide Receiver and similar probes?

I dont know if tossing Bush's joke administration in as a comparison is a real effective tactic to try and defend an politician with. At the end of the day heads of departments are responsible for their underlings, just like any other boss is.

 

[Farm Boy]

Ah Ruby Ridge. Nothing like undercover cops trailing a guy in error and randomly killing his son in the woods, then killing his wife for good measure when he didn't know what was going on and shot back.

Still don't think they've recovered from that one 20 years later.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I dont know if tossing Bush's joke administration in as a comparison is a real effective tactic to try and defend an politician with. At the end of the day heads of departments are responsible for their underlings, just like any other boss is.

In 2010, the Executive Branch employed 2,133,000 people. The buck doesn't start at the White House in this matter any more than it starts with the AG.

In the case of Operation Wide Receiver, it took nearly four years for indictments to be finally handed down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gu...007:_Operation_Wide_Receiver_and_other_probes

At the time, under the Bush administration Department of Justice (DOJ), no arrests or indictments were made. After President Barack Obama took office in 2009, the DOJ reviewed Wide Receiver and found that guns had been allowed into the hands of suspected gun traffickers. Indictments began in 2010, over three years after Wide Receiver concluded. As of October 4, 2011, nine people had been charged with making false statements in acquisition of firearms and illicit transfer, shipment or delivery of firearms.[20] As of November, charges against one defendant had been dropped; five of them had pled guilty, and one had been sentenced to one year and one day in prison. Two of them remained fugitives.[25]

No charges were filed in the other operation headed by the same ATF office. And one of the people directly responsible went on to play a prominent role in Fast and Furious:

nother, smaller probe occurred in 2007 under the same ATF Phoenix field division. It began when the ATF identified Mexican suspects who bought weapons from a Phoenix gun shop over a span of several months. The probe ultimately involved over 200 guns, a dozen of which were lost in Mexico. On September 27, 2007, ATF agents saw the original suspects buying weapons at the same store and followed them toward the Mexican border. The ATF informed the Mexican government when the suspects successfully crossed the border, but Mexican law enforcement were unable to track them.[4][10]

Less than two weeks later, on October 6, William Newell, then ATF's special agent in charge of the Phoenix field division, shut down the operation at the behest of William Hoover, ATF's assistant director for the office of field operations.[28] No charges were filed. Newell, who was special agent in charge from June 2006 to May 2011, would later play a major role in Operation Fast and Furious.[4][26]

And as the OP points out, the real ongoing villains in this matter are local residents who continue to purchase assault weapons in bulk. And nothing is being done to stop them from the same Republican politicians who are trying to turn this into a clearly partisan matter.