Here’s what I’d ask if I were, say, Jake Tapper:
“Mr. President, the Washington Post reported that on March 30th of last year, you told Sarah Brady that you were working on gun control, but in a way that was ‘under the radar.’ Is that true, and if so, what did you mean by that?”
Roll Call thinks that the notion that Fast and Furious was a means to buttress administration lies about the source of guns in the Mexican cartels, as a means to build public support for more stringent gun control, is “far fetched.” I don’t know why. I’m having trouble coming up with any other explanation that so well fits the available facts.
I’m a gun owner and not in favor of more gun control. However, this argument of “Fast and Furious as a wedge for more gun control” seems stupid.
Look at it from Holder’s point of view – thousands of Americans die from gun violence every year, yet American voters don’t seem to care. Why would American voters care about Mexicans getting killed?
Regarding “bolstering the Administration’s lies,” if so, why would the ATF release data showing that the number of US guns traced to a retail purchaser in Mexico DECLINED (PDF link) from 2009 to 2011? Also, if you look at the ATF numbers, there are between 11,000 and 21,000 US-sourced guns PER YEAR recovered in Mexico. That’s a lot of guns.
Which it might have been, were we not talking about an administration where increasingly it looks like Spongejoe Hairplugs is the brains of the outfit.
Chris you may have hit upon something…if you have correctly identified Holder’s point of view then that is the heart of the problem: he should not be looking at this through statistics or polls (i.e., politically), he should be looking at this as federal law enforcement.
“Why would American voters care about Mexicans getting killed?”
If they are getting killed by guns supplied by the American government – guns that are being sent to drug cartels, who are in a low-level civil war with the Mexican government – then the US government committed an act of war against an ally. Don’t you think that should merit some attention?
I’ll assume you’re not purposely missing my point, and restate it. Why would the American public be motivated to support gun control because Mexicans were getting killed?
I’ll also restate that these are not guns “supplied by” the Government. These are guns purchased (illegally) by Mexicans via American straw buyers. Our failure is in not stopping the sale.
No, their (not “our”) failure was in deliberately ordering the gun dealers to make the illegal sales to the straw purchasers, something they would not otherwise have done, and then deliberately not following them.
No, the failure was telling Andre Howard to sell guns to every illegal buyer that talks through the door with no intentional of following up.
That’s so cute that you expect Holder to think logically.
Look closer at your statistics and you’ll see the data bounces all over the place, which makes little if any logical sense. Traces of shotguns, for example, from 2007 to 2011,went sequentially as
2,141
4,119
2,701
662
1,230.
Traces of revolvers from 2007 to 2011 went
2,412
3,530
2,090
368
2,171
Unless Mexican criminals were on vacation during most of 2010, little if anything can be infered from the data.
Also, Mexicans are freely allowed to own pistols, shotguns, and bolt action and semi-automatic rifles, and the US has always freely sold them. Surely every self-respecting Mexican owns some Colts, Winchesters, Remingtons, and Brownings.
If the data was being cooked, it would make sense – there would be a clear trend. Considering that Mexico prohibits private sales and only has one gun store, it’s safe to say that most of those guns got into the shooters’ hands illegally.
I agree the data isn’t cooked. It’s just pretty worthless because it seems to be a reflection of random policies or how much time someone wants to blow on paperwork.
Mexico officially prohibits private sales, but has never enforced it so everyone buys and sells guns as they please. They don’t even regulate gun shows. Remember, in Mexico the police are paid to look the other way, and the severity of criminal penalties is there to encourage people to properly reward their policemen with cash incentives. ^_^
If you click on some of the data in your link, Mexican civilians own 15.5 million guns, officially. The true number would almost certainly be much higher. Mexican’s also enjoy the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Also, private illegal drug sales are officially prohibited in the US. So kids must be getting their weed from… um… straw buyers from foreign countries?
I think there is enough wrong with “Fast and Furious” that there is no need to go into speculation for its utlimate purpose. BATF caused harm to Mexico and its citizens by providing arms to criminals. These arms eventually were used to kill Americans as well. The people involved in this illegal activity should be held to account, not given protection by the AG. And if the AG is involved, he should be held to account as well. Motivation is a bit irrelevant. From the standpoint of proving intent to commit a crime, there’s plenty suggesting the BATF knew the weapons would end up on the other side of the border. That’s a crime on a level with Iran/Contra.
Yo, I’ve even seen theories that this was Hillary setting-up Obama. I mean, you can go “through the looking glass” all you want, but I’d rather see justice done first and let future generations agonize over the analagous Zapruder film at their leisure, you know?
Absolutely correct. Amazing that the justice issue is not the first thought (or even the last.)
Hey Chris, if some government gives a suitcase nuke to anyone and it’s used against an American city. Uh… would that be an act of war? Do ya suppose we’d react? It you think that’s out of line, we could just say they killed 300 Americans one day. Waddayathink?
All too often, liberals ignore a program’s bad results and hide behind their (claimed) good intentions. Well, I really don’t give a damn what their intentions were with Fast and Furious. They could’ve been trying to conjure up Snuggle Bunnies and Pink Unicorns for their renewable energy program for all I care. The results are hundreds of deaths. At the very least, we’re talking about negligent homocide. Some people need to go to jail for this. Does anyone honestly believe that if any ordinary citizen did something that resulted in hundreds of deaths, it would be ignored or excused? Being a government employee is no excuse.
I suppose that the finding of Fortune magazine that reveals that the ATF never intentionally allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. How the world came to believe just the opposite is a tale of rivalry, murder, and political bloodlust is completely irrelevant to this thread.
That’s not a “finding.” It’s bullshit.
From the meat of Gerrib’s Fortune story:
As political pressure has mounted, ATF and Justice Department officials have reversed themselves. After initially supporting Group VII agents and denying the allegations, they have since agreed that the ATF purposefully chose not to interdict guns it lawfully could have seized. Holder testified in December that “the use of this misguided tactic is inexcusable, and it must never happen again.”
There’s the rub.
Quite simply, there’s a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. 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.
As Rand wrote, this is bullshit. If the ATF purposefully chose to not interdict guns they had a lawful right to seize, then it purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked.
From the article: “Prosecutors repeatedly rebuffed Voth’s requests. After examining one suspect’s garbage, agents learned he was on food stamps yet had plunked down more than $300,000 for 476 firearms in six months. Voth asked if the ATF could arrest him for fraudulently accepting public assistance when he was spending such huge sums. Prosecutor Hurley said no. In another instance, a young jobless suspect paid more than $10,000 for a 50-caliber tripod-mounted sniper rifle. According to Voth, Hurley told the agents they lacked proof that he hadn’t bought the gun for himself.”
Seems to me that the problem was with the AUSA not allowing ATF to do its job.
Excellent. Progress can be made.
So you’re saying that someone in the Obama administration didn’t let the ATF do its job? Do tell! I agree with Al, progress can be made.
Wide Receiver:
Bush-era propgram where 400 RFID-chipped guns were sold to shady characters from participating gun shops, tracked extensively on the ground, via helicoper and planes to the Mexican border, where they were handed off to involved Mexican authorities leading to 1400 arrests and zero missing guns. Killing in 2007.
Fast and Furious.
Originated in October 2009. No chips in the 2000 guns. Gun shops -ordered- to make sales anyway (some resisting enough to get written threats to their firearms licenses). Minimal ground tracking to make sure they crossed the borders. Agents who objected slapped down. An agent that did tracking on his own dime was reprimanded. No helicopters or planes. No Mexican authorities at the border – because they weren’t involved or informed. 302 directly caused deaths.
1) We don’t know who authorized it.
2) We don’t know what in the hell they were thinking the ‘goal’ was. Unless you believe the whistleblowers.
3) The next claim is “Botched!” -> assume it was. OK. Who is at fault?! Not only which field agents screwed up, but assemble the complete list of people involved.
The answer can’t simultaneously be “There were no mistakes made” and “This was a botched operation.”
Comparing the Bush program to the Obama program is practically a line-by-line itemization of the difference between “competent” and “incompetent”.
And yet Holder can point to no mistakes in implementation. Which means the outcome -was- the desired outcome.
I’d still like to know -why-. But I can’t come up with an even vaguely exonerating intent.
Thank you, Al. So the best spin anyone can put on this is that our government allowed guns to flow freely across the border and then waited for Mexicans to be killed in gun battles and when the smoke cleared they counted the guns that they allowed into the hands of criminals that were used at that particular gunfight. At best this was callus, at worst criminal. But what kind of people put such low value on the lives of Mexican citizens that they came up with such a plan to begin with?