It’s funny peculiar that gun control advocates focused on spree killer Jared Lee Loughner’s extended magazine after he shot Congresswoman Giffords and killed six others. Their fixation is like a drunk looking for his keys under the streetlamp because the light’s better. The real issue: why was this lunatic—sorry, deeply mentally ill person walking the streets? azcentral.com is sharing the fruits of its successful legal effort to force Loughner’s alma mater, Pima Community College, to release over 250 emails mentioning the murderer. And guess who was in on the intersection between an obviously dangerous, erratic individual and guns?
The Phoenix division of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). Did special agent Altmnasio Vlahoulis stop Jared Lee Loughner from purchasing a firearm, or look into his access to firearms, or make some kind of move to prevent Loughner from acquiring firearms? He did not.
This is what he wrote to the college:
I did not come up with any gun info on this guy. Let me know if you need anything else.
I guess Vlahoulis and his Phoenix ATF homies were too busy enabling Mexican gun smugglers. [Click here for a pdf of all the Pima – Loughner emails]
Clearly, the Loughner killings were preventable. The bureaucrats at Pima Community College were too busy trying to do the right thing to do the right thing. If you know what I mean. If not, here’s an email from Pima Community College Dean Patricia Houston:
Yesterday, after the Active Shooter scenario training, I spoke to Officer Amado who recommended that we file a report to open a background investigation. Officer Reeve responded and told me that he would begin the process to take the student out of the class and expel him. I told him that we were not ready to do that because we need more investigation.
After active shooter training, the Dean acknowledges the possibility of Loughner going postal. And then played CYA: “It is a matter of balancing the disruptive student’s right to due process with the rights of the other students in the class.”
Back to the ATF, then, which is supposed to be our final line of defense against criminals and psychos and criminal psychos (but not Mexican drug lords) who want to buy guns and shoot the wrong people with them.
As we’ve said before, as the record clearly indicates, The ATF’s so busy being proactive—setting up lazy-ass “stings”—that they’ve forgotten how to be reactive.
Remember how Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious (the aforementioned AFT gun-enabling ops) got started? Gun dealers called the ATF. And what did they do? They made the problem worse.
Pima Community College sends them an email about a loon on the edge, and all they can do is run his name through the FBI’s NCIS criminal background check system and say “He ain’t in the system?” How hard would it have been to ping a few folks in the law enforcement community?
I know at least six families that should be feeling very, very angry right now. And tens of millions of taxpayers who are pouring money down an ATF-shaped rathole for no particular reason. DATF (Disband the ATF).