Gun Control & RKBA
Showing Original Post only (View all)The Truth about Fast & Furious [View all]
A great article about F&F just came out in Fortune. Looks like almost everything the gun nuts have been claiming about F&F is a lie. It's curious that the same pro-gunners who want to wait for all the evidence is in to render judgement on Zimmerman have been so quick to crucify the ATF despite not knowing the whole story. As more information comes in, as sane people rather than just loony gun bloggers start to examine the issue, the focus is starting to change from the conspiracy theories to the real facts about gun trafficking and the NRA's extremist pro-gun agenda.
The reality is that thousands of lives, both Mexican and American, have been lost as a direct and predictable consequence of the NRA's continued successful opposition to even the mildest of common sense gun laws -- things like closing the gun show loophole, passing a law specifically against gun trafficking, adequately funding and staffing the ATF.
http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/27/fast-and-furious-truth/
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Quite simply, there's a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.
Indeed, a six-month Fortune investigation reveals that the public case alleging that Voth and his colleagues walked guns is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies. Fortune reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential ATF documents and interviewed 39 people, including seven law-enforcement agents with direct knowledge of the case. Several, including Voth, are speaking out for the first time.
How Fast and Furious reached the headlines is a strange and unsettling saga, one that reveals a lot about politics and media today. It's a story that starts with a grudge, specifically Dodson's anger at Voth. After the terrible murder of agent Terry, Dodson made complaints that were then amplified, first by right-wing bloggers, then by CBS. Rep. Issa and other politicians then seized those elements to score points against the Obama administration, which, for its part, has capitulated in an apparent effort to avoid a rhetorical battle over gun control in the run-up to the presidential election. (A Justice Department spokesperson denies this and asserts that the department is not drawing conclusions until the inspector general's report is submitted.)