Gun store owner had misgivings about ATF sting

[LAGC]

When federal agents with Operation Fast and Furious told Andre Howard to sell weapons to illegal purchasers, he complied, but he feared someone would get hurt. Then a border agent was shot.

Reporting from Glendale and Rio Rico, Ariz. — In the fall of 2009, ATF agents installed a secret phone line and hidden cameras in a ceiling panel and wall at Andre Howard's Lone Wolf gun store. They gave him one basic instruction: Sell guns to every illegal purchaser who walks through the door.

For 15 months, Howard did as he was told. To customers with phony IDs or wads of cash he normally would have turned away, he sold pistols, rifles and semiautomatics. He was assured by the ATF that they would follow the guns, and that the surveillance would lead the agents to the violent Mexican drug cartels on the Southwest border.

When Howard heard nothing about any arrests, he questioned the agents. Keep selling, they told him. So hundreds of thousands of dollars more in weapons, including .50-caliber sniper rifles, walked out of the front door of his store in a Glendale, Ariz., strip mall.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-atf-guns-20110912,0,7611438.story

Why do we even pay our hard-earned tax money to fund the ATF again? We'd be just as well off without it...

[Atypical Liberal]

1. I don't think there was ever any intent to find out where the guns were going.

Personally, I think this was all part of a dedicated, coordinated effort to try and back-door gun control by making it an arms trafficking issue.

If they can't track the fucking drugs to their sources, why would they think they would have any luck tracking guns? I don't think they ever intended to. They simply intended to allow as many guns to be illegally trafficked as possible, so they could point and say, "See! We have to do something about assault weapons because they are all going to Mexico! Hardly anyone here uses them in crime, but we have to crack down on them because Mexicans are using them for crime!"

Fortunately, it's all coming apart at the seams. From the Mexican border, to Florida, to Indiana, more and more cases of government-sanctioned gunrunning are coming to light. Heads have already started to roll in the BATFE. There are rumblings about CIA involvement in an effort to strengthen rivals to the Zeta cartel. I don't think we've even scratched the surface.

[spin]

2. The rumors about CIA involvement bother me ...

Our CIA has often done reprehensible things that have hurt the reputation of our nation and has given support to many dictators who oppressed the citizens of their nations.

I hope only hope that there is no truth to the rumors. This scandal does seem to grow day by day.

[ileus]

6. The whole "sting" was to bolster support for a renewed AWB...

the public wasn't supposed to become aware of the truth.

[AtheistCrusader]

3. Why do people even believe the cops anymore?

I mean really.

[one-eyed fat man]

4. That didn't discourage the WaPo.....

http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_west_valley/glendale/glendale-gun-shop-found-to-be-no.-1-for-guns-found-at-mexican-crime-scenes-traced-back-to-their-shop

or it's breathless minions here from calling "Lone Wolf" bad names.

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=353356&mesg_id=353385

The very same stores named in the series of articles, Lone Wolf and Carter Country were two of the stores entangled by the ATF in its Fast and Furious fiasco. Shop owners being told to make sales they KNEW were fishy at the behest of the ATF, only to be vilified in the press for cooperating with the authorities.

[gravity556]

5. No kidding.

I remember the story on them popping up and seeing several breathless editorials screaming for more and better gun laws, then when the F&F clusterfuck broke, suddenly nothing. No mention that they were cooperating with the F-Troop. But still more hue and cry to pass more laws that would do nothing but infringe on the law abiding. Assholes.

Justice would be everyone who had a hand in this shitstorm being extradited to face charges and serve time in Mexico-where they did their damage.