Sources are reporting that the firearms used in the November terrorist attacks in Paris have been traced to an American gun owner in Phoenix, Arizona. The gun laws in France are famously strict, with possession of a semi-automatic firearm similar to the ones used in the attack subject to stricter controls than firearms subject to the National Firearms Act here in the United States (such as silencers and machine guns). It had been theorized that the firearms used by the terrorists might have been brought across Europe from the Middle East where it is much easier to obtain such firearms but this latest information seems to indicate otherwise.
In the United States it is possible to trace the ownership of a firearm from the manufacturer to the individual owner by looking through the “bound book” records of the licensed gun stores through which it passed. According to Judicial Watch’s sources the ATF performed such a trace of the firearms used in the Paris terrorist attacks and found that an individual gun owner in Phoenix, Arizona was the last documented person to own the firearm in question.
Sources say that the individual was investigated and found to be in possession of an unregistered fully automatic machine gun, but no action was ever taken against the individual.
The Phoenix gun owner that the weapon was traced back to was found to have at least two federal firearms violations—for selling one weapon illegally and possessing an unregistered automatic—but no enforcement or prosecutorial action was taken against the individual. Instead, ATF leaders went out of their way to keep the information under the radar and ensure that the gun owner’s identity was “kept quiet,” according to law enforcement sources involved with the case. “Agents were told, in the process of taking the fully auto, not to anger the seller to prevent him from going public,” a veteran law enforcement official told Judicial Watch.
According to Judicial Watch (who was instrumental in uncovering the “Fast and Furious” debacle where ATF agents allowed firearms to be sold to straw purchasers who then “walked” them across the border to Mexico) this indicates that the firearm used in the Paris terrorist attacks may have been sold as part of the “Fast and Furious” scandal, with this individual being one of the straw purchasers that the ATF allowed to continue funneling firearms to Mexican cartels.
TTAG was unable to independently verify this information, but given Judicial Watch’s prior work it is highly likely that the information is accurate.