10 September, 2011

Fast & Furious Hits Home: Indiana

Apparently it’s not enough to arm Mexican drug cartels. We’re also arming gangs in Indiana. Doesn’t this administration make you feel safer?

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has acknowledged an Indiana dealer’s cooperation in conducting straw purchases at the direction of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.  Exclusive documents obtained by Gun Rights Examiner show the dealer cooperated with ATF by selling guns to straw purchasers, and that bureau management later asserted these guns were being traced to crimes.

I’ve said this before, but it bears mentioning again. Perhaps it’d be simpler at this point to ask people to raise their hands if they belong to a group that didn’t receive illegal guns from the government.

See the slideshow here of U.S. DoJ documents related to this story.

And Codrea (author of the linked article) asks the all important questions:

It’s also fair to ask if it seems credible that such similar operations would develop independently in the Southwest (“Project Gunwalker”) and the Midwest (“Project Gangwalker’?), without authorization from and oversight coordination by Main Justice.

Pretty sure the answer to that one has to be “no”.

Mike Vanderboegh of Sipsey Street Irregulars has advocated opening “a second front” to complement House Oversight Committee investigations, and this column has been a consistent advocate for appointment of a truly independent special investigator, as well as for individual state attorneys general determining if multiple felony violations of their state laws, committed jointly by two or more persons, have been perpetrated.  What seems clear is none of this will happen unless gun owners create such an uproar that their demands cannot be ignored—by timid political wind riders who don’t wish to get involved, by an arrogant, stonewalling administration, and by their protectors/abettors in the mainstream press.

I have a lot of problems with “special prosecutors”. I think they are impossible to restrain if/when they go beyond their mandate without making it look like you’re covering something up. I think that often they become desperate to prove something to justify their cost and go overboard. I think you saw that with both Ken Starr and Patrick Fitzgerald.

However, having said that, this clearly appears to be a case of serious misconduct by the Department of Justice, and anyone who honestly believes that in such a case that the DoJ can investigate itself should unsubscribe from this blog right now. You’re too dumb to be reading this.

Perhaps Congressional oversight will be sufficient. I do believe that Congressman Issa (R-CA-49) is doing his best, but their may be limits to his ability to get to the truth.

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