Robberson Dallas Morning Views Mar 3 2011 Project Gunrunner, an ATF operation run amok
By
Tod Robberson / Editorial Writer
trobberson@dallasnews.com | Bio
10:51 AM on Thu., Mar. 3, 2011 | Permalink
http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/03/project-gunrunn.html
This CBS News report from Sunday offers a troubling look at a sting operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that appears to have gone badly awry. The operation allowed thousands of weapons to be purchased by gun smugglers in the United States and taken to Mexico, where they reached the hands of drug-cartel thugs. Some ATF agents deplored the operation, known as "Project Gunrunner," and they begged their superiors to shut the operation down. Those pleas were ignored.
Gun-shop owners recognized a suspicious pattern of purchases (even your most wild American gun fanatic doesn't buy 575 AK-47 assault rifles). They phoned ATF to warn them that something strange was going on. They were told not to worry, ATF had it under control.
But ATF didn't. On Dec. 15, U.S. border patrol officer Brian Terry was shot and killed. Two guns found at the scene were traced directly to the ATF operation.
Now comes a front-page story in The Dallas Morning News that ATF had been allowing a gun-smuggling ring to operate out of North Texas while they monitored them en route to the border. When Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata was killed on Feb. 15, ballistics tests and a partial serial number traced the weapon used in the shooting to the very North Texas smuggling ring that was under ATF observation.
Tom Crowley, spokesman for the AFT's Dallas division, insists that at no time did weapons involved in the Dallas division's Gunrunner operations ever make it across the border. Still, the fact that known gun smugglers were allowed to keep operating on the streets in North Texas, and that at least one of their weapons was used in an American agent's killing, is chilling.
The alarming part of this story is not that Mexican drug gangs are using North Texas for their operations. This is old news, and the fact is, Mexican drug cartels have operations in every major U.S. city. We will see more and more of this activity in the future. What should worry everyone is that ATF deliberately allowed deadly military-style assault rifles, pistols and even .50-caliber Barrett sniper rifles to cross the border and reach the hands of some of the most crazed mass murderers on the planet.
Mexico should be outraged. Americans should be outraged. This kind of insanity has to stop.
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