Those "Operation Fast & Furious" guns used to kill U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry? They were legally purchased in Arizona
The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal - Fortune Features
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.
. . .
"Republican senators are whipping up the country into a psychotic frenzy with these reports that are patently false," says Linda Wallace, a special agent with the Internal Revenue Service's criminal investigation unit who was assigned to the Fast and Furious team (and recently retired from the IRS). A self-described gun-rights supporter, Wallace has not been criticized by Issa's committee.
For me, the real nut here comes in passing, near the top of the piece, where the writer (Katherine Eban) mentions in passing that the valiant efforts of the NRA have crippled simple gun-tracking measures, thus making it *easy and legal* for international criminals banned from purchasing guns in Mexico to do so in Arizona.
I'm a hobby shooter and a gun owner, and I guess I'm even a pro-Second Amendment kinda American, if you wanna force the issue, but still, I want to know:
What the *fuck*, NRA? Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? Your paranoid, pandering, pocket-lining pseudo-racist bullshit is *actively* undermining a sovereign nation's attempt to claw back control of the streets from economically motivated thugs. You are *creating* a situation in which international law would conceivably support Mexican drone strikes against Arizona gun shops. How the Hell does that safeguard my rights and freedoms?
(Incidentally, Eban's Fortune piece linked above and excerpted is itself highly contentious right now--but the Wikipedia article on the so-called "ATF gun walking scandal" is pretty even-handed and informative.)
*thanks for the tip, Miriam!*
