A Plot To Undermine The Right To Bear Arms
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Posted 12/08/2011 07:03 PM ET Scandal: Newly obtained documents show that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives discussed using its covert operation Fast and Furious to argue for new rules about gun sales. We told you so.
As we observed in June, the way Fast and Furious — the government's gun-running operation that resulted in the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry — was conducted made no sense unless its intent was to facilitate violence with U.S. weapons in the interests of pursuing the administration's gun-control agenda.
Now documents obtained by CBS News confirm that our first suspicions were correct.
As CBS' Sharyl Attkisson reports, emails show ATF officials discussed using the deliberate transfer of weapons to Mexican drug cartels to justify a new gun regulation known as "Demand Letter 3."
We say deliberate because congressional testimony by ATF agents demonstrates how the tracking of Fast and Furious weapons stopped at the border and that requests to interdict the weapons transfers and arrest the gun traffickers were denied by higher-ups.
Demand Letter 3 was so named because it was the third ATF attempt to have Southwest gun shops report all long-gun (rifle or shotgun) sales to the ATF — even those to law-abiding American citizens with all the proper registration and other forms.
On July 14, 2010, five months before Terry's murder, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, the ATF's Phoenix special agent in charge of Fast and Furious: "Bill, can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time? We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long-gun sales. Thanks."
On Jan. 24, as the ATF was preparing to announce arrests in Fast and Furious, another email showed Newell saw it as an opportunity "to address multiple sales on long guns issue."
Subscribe to the IBD Editorials Podcast After the press conference, Chait emailed Newell that in "light of our request for Demand Letter 3, this case could be a strong supporting factor if we can determine how many multiple sales of long guns occurred during the course of the case."
Two earlier Demand Letters affected only a handful of dealers.
As it was funneling some 2,000 guns to Mexican criminals and drug lords, the Justice Department announced April 25 that it was requiring 8,500 gun stores in Arizona, California, Texas and New Mexico to report individual purchases of multiple rifles of greater than .22 caliber by law-abiding American citizens to the ATF because — get this — such guns are "frequently recovered at violent crime scenes near the Southwest border."
Like the ATF-supplied guns found next to the body of Brian Terry?
These documents show that Fast and Furious was intended not to interdict gun trafficking, but to make the administration's case for more gun control.
According to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, "there's plenty of evidence developing that the administration planned to use the tragedies of Fast and Furious as rationale to further their goals of a long-gun reporting requirement."
As he did Thursday in testifying before Congress trying to justify his incompetence or seeming ignorance concerning the operation, Attorney General Eric Holder tried to shift the blame to Congress and American gun dealers: "Unfortunately, earlier this year the House of Representatives actually voted to keep law enforcement in the dark when individuals purchase multiple semiautomatic rifles and shotguns in Southwest border gun shops."
Holder suggested that weapons allowed to "walk" into the hands of drug cartels during the course of the failed Fast and Furious operation will continue to show up at crime scenes in the U.S. and Mexico "for years to come." And, no doubt, at the deaths of more people on both sides of the border.
It is you, Eric Holder, who has kept the American people in the dark as to how and why Brian Terry had to die to further a domestic policy goal of the Obama administration. And it is you who must go.
