 Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry |
In late 2009, ATF was alerted to suspicious buys at seven gun shops in the Phoenix area. Suspicious because the buyers paid cash, sometimes brought in paper bags. And they purchased classic “weapons of choice” used by Mexican drug traffickers – semi-automatic versions of military type rifles and pistols…
Jaime Avila was one of the suspicious buyers. ATF put him in its suspect database in January of 2010. For the next year, ATF watched as Avila and other suspects bought huge quantities of weapons supposedly for “personal use.” They included 575 AK-47 type semi-automatic rifles.
ATF managers allegedly made a controversial decision: allow most of the weapons on the streets. The idea, they said, was to gather intelligence and see where the guns ended up. Insiders say it’s a dangerous tactic called letting the guns, “walk…”
CBS News has been told at least 11 ATF agents and senior managers voiced fierce opposition to the strategy. “It got ugly…” said one. There was “screaming and yelling” says another. A third warned: “this is crazy, somebody is gonna to get killed.”
Sure enough, the weapons soon began surfacing at crime scenes in Mexico – dozens of them sources say – including shootouts with government officials…
Then, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. The serial numbers on the two assault rifles found at the scene matched two rifles ATF watched Jaime Avila buy in Phoenix nearly a year before. Officials won’t answer whether the bullet that killed Terry came from one of those rifles. But the nightmare had come true: “walked” guns turned up at a federal agent’s murder…
Hours after Agent Terry was gunned down, ATF finally arrested Avila. They’ve since indicted 34 suspected gunrunners in the same group. But the indictment makes no mention of Terry’s murder, and no one is charged in his death…
RTFA for a more detailed account.
*sarcasm*
My tax dollars at work. I feel so proud.
*sarcasm*
You can buy AK47’s at a gun shop? That is insane!
Big shoot out in the UK the other day … 6 people injured by a boy and his air-rifle … I’d hate to think what would happen if he had an AK47 instead … (see: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/856443-eleven-children-shot-near-a-school-by-air-rifle-thugs-in-scotland)
The current leadership of the ATF needs to be charged as an accessory to this homicide, as well as thousands and thousands of other homicides in Mexico.
Of course, the death of a single Border Patrol Agent is much, much, much more important than the deaths of many thousands of innocent and not-so-innocent Mexicans. No racism here!
If this one American hadn’t been murdered, no-one in the US would give a fuck about selling guns to terrorists, just so long there was profit involved. After all, guns don’t kill people, people with guns kill people.
Sometimes it is a sad, bad thing to be a Ferengi.
As far as I know, it is not illegal to buy 575 assault rifles with paper bags full of cash.
The article leaves a lot out. It doesn’t say what they arrested Avila for. It says it was not for the murder of agent Terry. Was it for reselling the weapons without a license? Or for selling weapons to convicts (which is illegal).
And this is a surprise how.
The ATF is a one-stop shop for everything that makes America a danger to itself and to others.
Use of the products it supposedly regulates leads to paranoid schizophrenics like Qaddafi, who has m=a few billion Euros of Europe’s money so he could give a shit about international opprobrium, to open fire on the citizens of the artifice called Libya.
Check out the wikipedia entry on Libya.
The fucking sweaty, hairy arm-pit, hell-hole didn’t even exist as a country until 1952.
Its been Qaddafi’s personal whore-house and oil pit since 1969.
The only time it hasn’t been elbow-deep up someone’s bloody colon was when the US bombed the shit out of it in 1986.
#2 “You can buy AK47′s at a gun shop? That is insane!”
Just what do you think they are buying?
The AK-47 is a selective-fire rifle and one of the selections is full automatic. There are hundreds of variants on that design. The MSM loves the term since it has a Rambo image.
No, Not AK-47’s: “AK-47 Type semi-automatic rifles”
Also known as the SKS, firing the same callibre round (7.62 X 39) but rarely from high quality manufacturing sources. Of course we are talking about possibly the most reliable (not necessarily accurate or powerful) modern projectile weapon ever designed.
Called “the people’s weapon” because it was cheap to produce and about as likely to malfunction as an anvil.
Now think about this for a second. Would the drug dealers and terrorists be nearly as likely to act with impunity on the local populace if every family in mexico had at least one of these rifles with someone trained to operate it? I think not. Controlling access to firearms only ensures that only criminals will have them.
This is just yet more evidence that the ATF is ridiculous as a law enforcement agency- the TSA’s not-as-useful brother. Anyone remember Ruby Ridge?
Metis- Racism? Come on. Please. More like typical American apathy.
This reckless, public-endangering behavior by a federal government agency was also done by the FBI when they let the underwear bomber get on the plane instead of stopping him in the airport gate.
#2 Ben-in-the -Woods said
You can buy AK47′s at a gun shop? That is insane!
Actually you can’t buy an AK-47 at a gun shop, at least not most citizens.
An AK-47 is a full auto weapon. That means if you hold the trigger down the gun will continue to fire round after round until you release the trigger or the gun is empty. This is also a characteristic of what are often called “assault weapons”.
You can buy semi-automatic versions of the same design but they do not fire continuously. To fire another round you must release the trigger and fire again. So the guns sold in the US as AK-47s are usually not quite an AK.
Most Americans (i.e. in certain states and not fellons) can but the semi-auto version. The full auto, military version requires a special (expensive!) permit to buy one. Very few Americans have this type of permit.
#4 Yankinwaoz asked what Avila was arrested for. Most probably he was arrested under a charge of arranging a straw purchase. It is not legal for someone who can legally purchase a gun to do so with the intent of selling that firearm to another person who is not able to legally purchase a gun.
Someone who purchases a gun with the intent of selling it to a convicted fellon for example, would be committing a very serious crime. Huge fines and years of prison time if caught.
There have apparently many examples of these guns being straw purchased in the US and sold to Mexican drug gangs. That is why ATF has been involved for several years in trying crack down on this illegal trade.
Americans should also know that many of the guns used by Mexican drug gangs come from the US government. We supply tens of thousands of M16s to the Mexican armed forces either at low prices or as direct aid. Thousands of these guns are then stolen from the Mexican military and sold on the black market to the drug gangs.
Just another aspect of our amazingly successful war on drugs. 40 years of effort and expense with pretty much nothing to show for it. “I have been banging my head on this wall for forty years. I know it’s ready to fall any second now!” What will we do with all these surplus law enforcement types when we win the war on drugs?
AK-47 “type” rifles sold in gunshops are semi automatic, not true AK-47 rifles that are capable of firing in full auto made. Some states allow citizens to own full auto AK-47 rifles but with proper NFA paperwork.
In otherwords what this person was buying was semi automatic AK-47 type rifles.
575 of them is a hell of alot, why the ATF did not stop it after say 30 I have no idea, that was just stupid. There is no law on how many guns a person can buy, but obviously this guy was conducting “straw man” purchasing. Buying guns for other people. I work in a gunshop and my shop would have never went past 5 of the exact guns to the same customer before stopping the sale and reporting the transaction. Its the law, we could lose our license for allowing this kind of thing. And I can guarantee you we would not have sold guns to someone with bags of money, lol.
The New Watergate.
Nixon was driven from office because he gave the approval to break in and obtain information from his rival party.
No one died as a result.
The Obama Administration apparently deceiving the public, and as a direct result of this deceit people have died.
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Let’s see, the very gun dealers which are now being demonized by the Obama Administration were the one’s who were alerting the ATF to these gun sales, and were told to continue making these sales.
The acting head of the ATF at the time was Kenneth E. Melson,
http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/Kenneth_E._Melson
An Obama appointee working under Eric Holder.
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive.”
So Kenneth Melson, an Obama Appointee, certainly authorized the continued sale and export of weapons to Mexico over and above the complaints of his own staff and agents, and even over the objections of the dealers themselves. Now these weapons have been used by drug gangs to kill and intimidate. An ATF agent was apparently killed by one of these guns, and all we hear is about the unrestricted flow of guns into Mexico. So the ATF is encouraging the export of these guns so they can then collect these guns as “proof” that America is supplying guns to Mexico?
Now that Kenneth Melson is in the thick of this deception, it is reasonable to assume he was a lone wolf? Or more reasonable to assume he was doing this with the approval of his boss, Holder?
Is it reasonable to believe that Holder was working with the approval of his boss, Obama?
“they cling to guns or religion”.
Ahh…. okay, I suppose people being able to buy semi-automatics but not automatics is slightly less insane. And I suppose if widespread gun ownership is what makes the US the crime-free, freedom loving land of liberty that it is today then who am I to say. I’ve never lived in the US, and the last time I went there I was retina scanned and fingerprinted along with all the other tourists. Assumable that is because tourists aren’t allowed to carry guns so it makes it easier to identify our bullet ridden bodies.
As for the idea: “Would the drug dealers and terrorists be nearly as likely to act with impunity on the local populace if every family in mexico had at least one of these rifles with someone trained to operate it? I think not. Controlling access to firearms only ensures that only criminals will have them.” is sound in theory, but in practice you just end up with an arms race that results in more people having bigger weapons.
Ben-in-the-Woods
You are certainly right in pointing out that US Gov personnel could be far more courteous to foreign travelers. They could be more courteous to US citizens too. I’ve seen some pretty frustrating arrangements in European customs offices also. It seems to go with the job.
And don’t worry about overarmed US citizens. You still have to hit what you aim at and with the cost of ammo going thru the roof and lack of good places to shoot, more and more Americans can’t hit what they aim at for lack of practice!
However,I read an article in the British press the other day about a UK robber who was suing a homeowner because the homeowner shot the burglar with an air gun during the robbery attempt. I couldn’t help but think that robber was lucky he didn’t try that shit in one of the US states that provide legal protection to a homeowner defending her home.
But you should come and visit again. The US is actually very safe outside of the rotten urban cores of the decayed old cities (a sad seemingly intractable problem). Elsewhere you will be reasonably safe. Most Americans are pretty decent folks. Just smile at the TSA folks as they feel you up! Shit you’ll pay $75 in Vegas for the same experience!
Shoot ’em.
Shoot ’em all.
New ones pop up, shoot ’em.
Keep shooting them until they learn to buy American!
AK-47? Ptooey!
Hey ! The CIA has the Most Drugs and the ATF has the Most Guns !!! Who watches the Watchers ?
As others have pointed out, these were semi-automatic versions of the AK-47, not full automatic versions, which require a special (federal) license that is quite expensive and quite rare.
While the purchases were certainly suspicious, they weren’t illegal.
But that’s beside the point. If Brian Terry were shot by a gun from another source, would his death be any more or less tragic? I thought not. Guns are tools. Until put to use by human beings, they are inanimate objects.
The ATF, like most government agencies, has its good and bad aspects, but overall, has its head up its ass frequently enough to amass a bad reputation. What else is new?
But I do question why and how, if they were “letting the guns walk” they didn’t notice that they had walked to illegal purchasers and to Mexico? The whole point of letting them walk is to follow them to the bad guys who end up with them and do something about the criminals. I guess that’s too much work.
What’s that? They didn’t arrest just the one guy, but went for a longer strategy that netted 34 people? Sounds like a strategy worth trying. Everyone keeps saying the same tactics in the War on Drugs don’t work. And if you have a war you have to expect some losses, and some civilian casualties. I just wish they had gotten more people in their eventual rollup, which may have been accelerated because they weren’t willing to take the heat.
We are truly headed for tough times. I can think of nothing we can do except prepare.
I have now come to believe that there are two classes of citizens in the US. The “Privileged” and the working class. The privileged class are not the uber-wealthy, but those who believe they are “entitled” or “privileged” to have benefits which are significantly better than those available to the working class at a labor cost significantly less than available to the working class.
It has become obvious that there are so many that have become totally dependent on the system, so dependent on their masters, that the system will have to collapse before any meaningful reform can take place.
Wisconsin is the perfect example. The unions have in large part have become the government in that the liberals have created a mechanism whereby they keep themselves in power by granting unions fat contracts in return for votes and financial support. We also know much of the civil rights legislation, and those who promote and defend such, has had the effect of manufacturing a dependent class of privileged citizenry for the same purpose of keeping the liberals in power.
We know that this privileged class will stay in power as long as their liberal leaders continue their handouts. This once was called Graft. Now it is business as usual. That is how corrupt our system has become. As long as the government continues it’s graft through fat and expensive contracts and entitlement handouts to the privileged, they will continue to support the source of their extravagance.
Now what will happen when the working class can no longer support the privileged class? We have already passed that point, and except for massive state and federal borrowing the situation would have already descended into chaos.
The borrowing cannot continue because the economy is no longer growing at a rate to sustain the increased debt load.
Ergo, collapse. ( I give it a few more years before the last gasp. Watch the most liberal states fail first. California, New York, Ohio, etc. At least we will see it coming. Prepare.)
Charles.
It is neither expensive nor rare to get a fully automatic weapon. Think before you post something about which you know nothing about.
Uh, $200 for the license is expensive for most people. And, for that reason, most gun owners don’t do so. Thus, rare.
Oh, you said “get” not “legally purchase”. As the late, great Emily Latella would say, That’s different, never mind.
It all goes back to the lame war on drugs.
Not all Ak47s do full auto. Those sent to the states normally can’t. Extra money has to change hands for full auto and the FBI has to approve.
Of course I once had the option of buying a full auto AK47 that got liberated in Nam on the black market but I declined. I honestly think full auto with this gun/cartridge combo is a good way to miss a lot and get yourself killed.
An SKS has a smaller fixed clip and you don’t normally remove the clip. It is rugged and reliable but it is an older design.
They are chambered for the same round but then some American made rifles are chambered for this round. Performance wise the round approximates a 30-30 which means its a decent choice for deer hunting and cheaper than a new rifle.
I don’t hunt myself but I’ve had to repair my car after hitting a deer along with a fairly large number of other locals. One friend hit a second one before she got the damage from the first hit fixed.
Needless to say we like deer hunters as long as they follow all safety rules and only hunt during hunting season. You have to thin the herds.
# 16 spsffan said, “these were semi-automatic versions of the AK-47, not full automatic versions, which require a special (federal) license that is quite expensive and quite rare.” Or, it requires a half-trained gunsmith and about $20 in parts to convert a semi-auto AK to full auto. I guarantee you, the Mexican drug mafias are not going out with single shot AK-47s.
# 22 deowll said, “I’ve had to repair my car after hitting a deer along with a fairly large number of other locals.” And those damn locals can really mess up your fenders!
When I was in Angola, the UN peacekeepers who were camped nearby (Romanian soldiers) had a large collection of captured AK-47s. Real Russian ones supplied from Cuba. A couple of times, their armorer set up a shooting day and we got to play with them. It’s fun to shoot but the tolerances are so poor, you feel like it will shake itself apart. And they are barely accurate to about 50 feet. But you can just about fill the chamber with mud and it just keeps banging away.
Blind Steve:
The country that invented John Prime can’t be all bad ;-D. I took a Greyhound once from Canton, NY to Lorado, Texas (then a train across Mexico) about 20 years ago. Must admit that upstate New York and Ohio where the scariest places I’ve been. However, the stops at Memphis, Nashville, in fact, everyone before Texas where very friendly and quite pleasant. Weirdly it seems that the wealthier states where the scarier states ….
Ah_yes:
I think you bit on the “The ‘Privileged’ and the working class” is very keen observation indeed. Certainly what you said is very much true in the UK ….
Ben-in-the-woods
You mention upstate NY and the Greyhound. More than 30 years ago, I spent several hours waiting for a bus in the Buffalo Greyhound station. Sounds like you went thru there too! It was a scary place.
#22 deowll said “Needless to say we like deer hunters as long as they follow all safety rules and only hunt during hunting season. You have to thin the herds.”
Does anybody personally know of anyone who goes deer hunting with a AK-47/SKS semi-automatic rifle? I know a number of hunters and none of them would even consider using this type of rifle to hunt.
Here in the UK using AK-47 would be considered overkill. After-all, to hunt all you need is a shot-gun, a bird of prey (to comply with recent anti hunting-with-hounds laws), 500 hounds, 40 horses, some red jackets, a lot of port, 16 ATVs, and bugle …