Thread: EDITORIAL: Too fast, too furious

EDITORIAL: Too fast, too furious

Justice Department gunrunning scheme backfires


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By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

6:57 p.m., Wednesday, July 13, 2011

The Justice Department’s effort to contain the Operation Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal is crumbling. Members of Congress are demanding full disclosure regarding the bizarre scheme to funnel guns to Mexican drug cartels, supposedly to help sniff out the higher-level bad guys. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. isn’t helping congressional investigators understand the rationale behind this breathtakingly dumb idea.

The so-called Fast and Furious program fit right in with the White House contention that gun shops in the Southwest have been contributing to violence in Mexico. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), part of the Justice Department, started the operation as a sting to arrest purchasers in border states who purportedly were engaging in illegal cross-border arms trafficking. The scheme spun out of control, and the agency reportedly wound up telling gun dealers to proceed with sales even after dealers had raised red flags about certain buyers. In this way, the ATF may have become an accomplice to the smuggling of some 1,700 weapons into Mexico, allegedly leading to the death of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry near Nogales, Ariz., in December 2010. Two Fast and Furious weapons were discovered at that crime scene, and other such weapons have been found after the deaths of untold numbers of Mexican citizens.

The botched operation provided ammunition for administration officials intent on exploiting any excuse to demand expanded gun-control measures. The White House often claimed that 90 percent of the weapons used in Mexican crimes had been traced to the United States, but the number has never been substantiated. By all appearances, Fast and Furious delivered statistics to back up the figure. Not surprisingly, the Justice Department pounced on the issue Monday. It issued a regulation requiring gun shops in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California to report purchases of multiple rifles made within a five-day period. The timing of the new mandate seems a little too convenient, as it’s not yet clear how much of this supposed gunrunning “problemâ€

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Hurray! The Washington Times! Yesterday CNN!

Gungate <____ I like it.

The snowballs are quickly becoming an avalanche
!

W

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