'Fast and Furious' just won't die
E. Thomas McClanahanYou have to wonder how long before this story finally gets the treatment it deserves. One of the few outfits to take it seriously is Univision, the Spanish-language network.
Sunday, Univision aired an hour-long special, detailing how drug-cartel hitmen mowed down teenagers using weapons obtained via a U.S. government gun-walking operation called “Fast and Furious.” Key bit:
“On January 30, 2010 … at least 20 hit men parked themselves outside a birthday party of high school and college students in Villas de Salvarcar, Ciudad Juarez. Near midnight, the assassins, later identified as hired guns for the Mexican cartel La Linea, broke into a one-story house and opened fire on a gathering of nearly 60 teenagers. Outside, lookouts gunned down a screaming neighbor and several students who had managed to escape. Fourteen young men and women were killed, and 12 more were wounded before the hit men finally fled.
“Indirectly, the United States government played a role in the massacre by supplying some of the firearms used by the cartel murderers. Three of the high caliber weapons fired that night in Villas de Salvarcar were linked to a gun tracing operation run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), according to a Mexican army document obtained exclusively by Univision News.”
Univision said it had verified nearly 60 more weapons purchased by straw buyers that were supposedly being monitored by ATF as part of the Fast and Furious operation. These weapons were found at locations in Mexico involving at least one other massacre, as well as several homicides and kidnappings.
Univision said it had access to the “list of serial numbers for weapons used in Fast and Furious” and a “list of guns seized in Mexico” and by cross-referencing the lists was able to locate many of the victims.
Mitt Romney should find a way to bring this up in Wednesday’s debate, which will deal with domestic policy. One of the segments, after all, will cover “the role of government.”
Phil Cardarella
8 months, 2 weeks agoSo, your position is that Mitt should come out in favor of strong gun control laws that would stop heavy weaponry from flooding into Mexico from the USA — where the NRA makes sure the flood keeps flowing? Oh, no. You just want him to say something mean about Holder.
Look, the ATF did a bad job, but it was doing so only because there was already a terrible problem with weapoons moving south. (Lest we lose track, the ATFers are the guys who decided to fatally play ninja at Waco instead of just arresting a guy who jogged along the highway alone every morning.)
Frankly, they have so little ability to impact firearms sales in the US — given the NRA & SCOTUS — that they usually deal only with some poor guy who had a burglary conviction when he was 18 and ends up doing federal time for his hunting rifle. Gun-walking — under Bush or Obama — is way outside their level of comfort.
George Hunsucker
Northland
8 months, 2 weeks agoWho was leading ATF at the time of Waco phil?
William R. Nelson
8 months, 2 weeks agoUniVision - doing the job the U.S. MSM won’t do.
Another UniVision bombshell: Fast & Furious had other operations in Florida and Texas as well.
This is not just some ATF underlings gone rogue in Arizona, despite this administration’s lies.
Perhaps if Eric Holder simply fired some U.S. Attorneys, then maybe Congress would ask for his head on a plate…
Phil Cardarella
8 months, 2 weeks agoWhile the politicizing of federal prosecutions was a Bush/Rove/Gonzales affair, the lack of control over the cowboy tendencies of federal law enforcement is a bipartisan affair. Any time an AG or US Atty or federal judge tries to put any kind of rein on the FBI or ATF or DEA for their abuses, they are tarred as “soft on crime” — or worse.
I was merely pointing out that — given the NRA’s influence in keeping a flood of such weaponry available in the US — it is unrealistic to lay the such blame for violence in Mexico on the ATF’s screwup of one case.
The violence in Mexico is a result of two American public policy choices: We outlaw drugs — making them insanely profitable. We do nothing to outlaw guns, making them readily available. If drugs were legal (and therefore cheap) and such dangerous weapons were illegal (and therefore very expensive) a few people would die of drug overdoses, and a few of gunshots — usually from jealous lovers.
The rest of us would be a lot safer — on both sides of the border.