Could F&F take gun control off the table?

Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the 9mm guns as "cop killer."

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“The Fortune piece conspicuously ignores the most important fact in this case: ATF encouraged cooperating dealers to sell guns to known traffickers. That fact is key to understanding how ATF made a strategic choice to track the guns instead of stop them. The central claim of the article, that there was nothing ATF could have done to stop the illegal sales, is simply incompatible with the evidence. If it is true that ATF could not interdict and seize weapons due to legal hurdles beyond its control, then ATF had no business telling gun dealers to go ahead with the sales.

“The Fortune article asks the reader to believe that sworn statements by whistleblowers who put their careers on the line to expose the truth for Brian Terry’s family are merely conspiratorial fabrications for the sole purpose of getting back at their boss. It asks the reader to believe that the ATF Director, the Attorney General, the White House, and Congress all fell victim to the fabrication and completely misinterpreted or misunderstood the thousands of pages of documents that corroborate the whistleblower allegations. The Justice Department retracted its previous denials of those allegations last December 2. If the Fortune article is accurate, the Justice Department’s December 2 retraction would itself be a false capitulation under political pressure aimed at protecting senior DOJ officials at the expense of ATF field office personnel in Arizona.

“The Fortune article inexplicably credits the self-serving statements of the supervisors in Arizona responsible for overseeing Fast and Furious. There is no explanation as to why, given their obvious motive to claim there was no gun-walking to save themselves from criticism and punishment. That’s why the written records, the interviews on the record, and obtaining and weighing all evidence is so important. We can only draw fair, informed conclusions from the facts.”

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MFDoom said:

I suppose no one read the Fortune article that had 6 months of research and real reporting. The ATF has no official policy to intentionally allow the trafficking of guns. F&F is not an attempt on gun control. Why are we still talking about this when there are more credible things to discuss.

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

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The emails refer to meetings between the FFL and the U.S. Attorney‟s office to
address the concerns being raised by the FFL. ATF supervisor David Voth wrote on
April 13, 2010:


I understand that the frequency with which some individuals under
investigation by our office have been purchasing firearms from your
business has caused concerns for you. … However, if it helps put you at
ease we (ATF) are continually monitoring these suspects using a variety of
investigative techniques which I cannot go into [in] detail.1


In response, the gun dealer expresses concern about potential future liability and sought
something in writing to address the issue explicitly:


For us, we were hoping to put together something like a letter of
understanding to alleviate concerns of some type of recourse against us
down the road for selling these items. We just want to make sure we are
cooperating with ATF and that we are not viewed as selling to bad guys.2


Following this email, the ATF arranged a meeting between the FFL and the U.S.
Attorney‟s office. According to the FFL, the U.S. Attorney‟s office scheduled a follow-up
meeting with the FFL, but asked that the FFL‟s attorney not be present.3 <_<


At the meeting on May 13, 2010, the U.S. Attorney‟s office declined to provide
anything in writing but assured the gun dealer in even stronger terms that there were
safeguards in place to prevent further distribution of the weapons after being purchased
from his business.4 As we now know, those assurances proved to be untrue. On June
17, 2010, the gun dealer wrote to the ATF to again express concerns after seeing a report
on Fox News about firearms and the border:

The segment, if the information was correct, is disturbing to me. When
you, [the Assistant U.S. Attorney], and I met on May 13th, I shared my
concerns with you guys that I wanted to make sure that none of the
firearms that were sold per our conversation with you and various ATF
agents could or would ever end up south of the border or in the hands of
the bad guys. … I want to help ATF with its investigation but not at the risk
of agents‟ safety because I have some very close friends that are U.S.
Border Patrol agents in southern AZ[.]5

Incredibly, the FFL sent this email six months before guns from the same ATF operation
were found at the scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry‟s murder. So, not only were
the ATF agents who later blew the whistle predicting that this operation would end in
tragedy, so were the gun dealers—even as ATF urged them to make the sales.

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MFDoom said:

Respectfully, how are these emails indicative of an ATF sanctioned policy and a conspiracy to rob us of our 2A rights? FYI the Fortune piece author Katherine Eban is an award winning investigative reporter....

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As more information came to light, however, Gil and Canino concluded that hundreds and
hundreds of guns had been walked. These guns ended up in at crime scenes in Mexico, about
which Gil and Canino received extensive briefings. Gil and Canino became incensed when they
finally began to learn about the full scope of Operation Fast and Furious and the investigative
techniques involved:

Q. When you first got the impression that this was part of a strategy to
let guns walk into Mexico, what was your reaction to that strategy?

A. I wasn’t convinced that this happened until this past April after all
the allegations were made, and I talked to different people. I was
beyond shocked. Embarrassed. I was angry. I'm still angry.
Because this is not what we do.

* * *

That is, I mean, this is the perfect storm of idiocy. That is the
only way I could put it. This is, I mean, this is inconceivable to
me. This is group think gone awry. You know what General
George Patton says, if we are all thinking alike, then nobody is
thinking. Right? Nobody was thinking here. How could anybody
think, hey, let's follow, I mean there is a guy in this case that
bought over 600 guns. At what point do you think you might want
to pull him aside and say, hey, come here for a second.137

When Canino himself uncovered hard evidence that ATF had allowed the guns to disappear from
their surveillance he understood the whistleblower allegations were true:

Q. Okay, and take us through what happened in April.

A. I was here on a visit to headquarters.

Q. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms headquarters?

A. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms headquarters, and I was, I was
looking at a, the management log on this case. And the first two
pages, if I'm not mistaken, there are entries there that
chronicle us walking away on three separate occasions from
stash houses.

Q. And did that sound to you incredible?

A. I stopped reading.

Q. So you only got through two pages of this management log?

A. Yeah.

Q. And then you couldn't read it any longer?

A. Didn't want to.

Q. Because you were so upset?

A. Yes.

Q. And you were upset because walking away from three stash houses
struck you as so outrageous?

A. Walking away from one, walking away from one gun when you
know that that gun is going to be used in a crime when you, I
mean, there is no, there was no gray area here guys. There was
no gray area here. We knew that these guys were trafficking
guns into Mexico. There is no gray area. They weren't
trafficking, [the] guys weren't going out and buying two Larson 22
pistols. These guys were buying 7.62, 223's, .50 caliber rifles,
okay, there was no mistake about this. This is no gray area.

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I talk to folks about this and none of them believe that F&F was anything more than a botched ATF program to try to find the ring leaders running a gun smuggling program. It is embarrassing, but they don't see it as anything else.

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I can't agree with that. Many people will take a negative view of guns from the experience, they won't know the details, all they will remember is that there was some big gun thing between the U.S. and Mexico and a cop got killed. Some people will let it reinforce their negative view of guns.

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hermannr said:

When you read anything about F&F keep in mind what the present Mayor of Chicago has been quoted as saying..."let no crisis go unexploited"

If you don't have a crisis to exploit, create one. Unfortunately for these folks, this crisis backfired.

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husbandofaromanian said:

To answer the OP question. F&F was a desperate attempt at gun control in my opinion. The fact that it blew up in their face will absolutely slow down gun control and force them to back off of dirty tricks for a while.
So the way I see it they have four choices.
A. Back off of gun control for a while hoping memories of F&F will fade.
B. Go to a plan b. (UN treaty, EPA banning lead bullets, Super high taxes).
C. Try for a Constitutional convention to water down the 2nd.
D. Never really attack the 2nd just use it for politics like abortion.

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