Reading this morning’s gun news, it seemed pretty clear that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive (and Really Big Fires) is, once again, still, even more so, in deep you-know-what. “Three gun-smuggling suspects are set to appear in a Dallas federal court after one of the weapons was tied to last month’s fatal shooting of a U.S. agent in Mexico,” chron.com reports. “The probable cause hearing was set for Tuesday, a day after three men were arrested in their Dallas-area homes. The gun that was used by a smuggler to kill ICE Agent Jaime Zapata last month in Mexico has been traced to a Texas gun shop, where it was purchased by suspected gun traffickers who had reportedly been under ATF surveillance for over a year.” An email blast from firearmscoalition.org provides more details . . .
According to an affidavit in the arrest of alleged straw purchasers, Otilio and Ranferi Osorio, and Kelvin Morrison, they had previously sold 40 guns to a federal agent, but had not been arrested.
Dallas ATF spokesman Tom Crowley would not release details about when the gun was purchased, or whether the suspected straw buyers were under active ATF surveillance at the time the murder gun was purchased. He referred questions on details to the U.S. Justice Department in Washington.
So far, DOJ has not been forthcoming. We received word from Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office today that AG Holder failed to respond to the Senator’s questions about the AZ scandal by the Feb. 23 deadline Grassley had set.
Today, The Firearms Coalition asked Sen. Grassley to call for hearings into both the AZ and Texas investigations, requiring ATF Executives to testify under oath. We received assurance today that the Senator remains resolute, and that staffers are burning the midnight oil on this investigation.
You may recall that this is the second time a gun linked to the ATF’s “look the other way” policy stateside has been implicated as a murder weapon in the death of a U.S. federal agent. The Gunwalker scandal hit the MSM when the press learned that another such gun was used in the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
As I’ve said many times, however many guns that have flowed down the so-called Iron River from American gun stores to Mexican drug cartels, the number pales next to the number of weapons the Spanish-speaking bad guys source from within the country (corrupt police, military defectors, foreign purchases, etc.).
Since not one but two U.S. law enforcement officials were shot by U.S. smuggled guns, that can only mean one thing: the ATF allowed thousands of weapons to go walkies. This in an effort to justify Project Gunrunner, the ATF program designed to stop U.S. – Mexico gun running.
The ATF is attempting to keep a lid on the Gunwalker scandal. Can’t be done. Not only is Grassley breathing down their neck, and Agent Brian Terry’s family looking at launching a lawsuit (new info), but the gunrunners themselves will sing like los canarios.