by Alan Korwin

An insider source investigating BATFE’s gun smuggling to vicious Mexican drug cartels, reveals that several of the so-called “straw purchasers” were prohibited possessors, or had suspended drivers’ licenses and other problems that should have prevented them from passing the NICS background check.

Three of the straw purchasers, now indicted, had criminal histories, including a pending class 3 felony charge for burglary, an order of protection, a domestic-violence conviction, and a felony for resisting arrest, later reduced (and criminal damage charge dropped). Any of these should have prevented, or at least delayed purchases when they hit the FBI NICS computer. One defendant even had a CCW permit, under circumstances that seem suspicious but remain unclear.

Whistleblower BATFE agent John Dodson apparently indicated that the NICS system had these buyers flagged for special treatment, and that when a sale request came through, it was routed to a special FBI office that approved the purchases, according to William La Jeunesse at FOX News. Dodson’s prior statements are absolutely incriminating, and riveting: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/03/eveningnews/main20039031.shtml

This implies that the FBI may have been complicit in the scheme, allowing BATFE’s mules to get possession of guns when they should have been blocked. How people with disqualifying criminal records or a suspended driver’s license could have repeatedly gotten through the tightly run NICS system is difficult to otherwise explain.

CBS News is reporting that a key ATF manager told Congress on July 26 he discussed the ATF’s controversial gunwalking operation with a White House National Security staffer as early as September…

by Jeff Knox

Representative Darrel Issa (R-CA) referred to the activities of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) Operation Fast and Furious as “felony stupid.” Others have suggested that the plan was intentionally designed and cleverly crafted to bolster statistics in support of stricter gun control laws. Whether the operation was just stupid or intentionally criminal, it was clearly bad behavior on the part of ATF and Justice Department (DOJ) and such bad behavior should not be rewarded.

Some members of Congress, Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD) in particular, want to reward ATF and DOJ’s criminal stupidity with increased funding and increased authority through tighter regulation of firearms dealers and lawful firearm purchasers. ATF has introduced – and the Administration has now approved – and “emergency” regulatory change requiring firearms dealers in border states to report any purchaser who buys more than one semi-auto rifle greater than a .22 within a given week. The US House of Representatives promptly, and properly, rejected the new regulations by passing an appropriations rider prohibiting any funds from being used to enact or enforce the plan.

Proponents of the regulation argue that it gives ATF an important tool to help detect straw buyers and traffickers and that it poses little inconvenience to lawful gun buyers. Many on our side disagree, but usefulness and inconvenience aside, the fact is that Congress has looked at long gun reporting in the past and rejected the idea. For ATF and the Obama administration to now push forward, bypassing Congress, in order to do something Congress has previously refused to do is clearly overreaching and probably illegal. If Congress had passed a law setting auto mileage standards, but had specifically chosen to omit larger pickups from those standards, it would be outrageous for some bureaucracy to later enact regulations including trucks. This case is no different except that it is questionable whether even Congress has the authority to regulate firearms sales. Unelected bureaucrats certainly don’t.