Gun Dean: Obama, DOJ Play Musical Chairs at BATFE

by John M. Snyder (more by this author)

Posted 09/06/2011 ET

The Gun Dean decried the Aug. 30 personnel changes in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s office in the wake of the Fast and Furious scandal.

"The Obama administration has been reduced to playing musical chairs at the Justice Department," said John M. Snyder, who as the senior gun rights expert and advocate in Washington earned the moniker: The Gun Dean. Snyder is a former journalist for National Rifle Association publication and is a founding member of the Citizen’s Committee to Protect the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

He is also the author of The Gun Saint, the story of how St. Gabriel Possenti, in an incident not related to his cause for sainthood, used a pistol to protect peasants from robbers. Snyder is working to convince the Vatican to name the saint the official patron saint of handguns.

"This musical chairs charade is the Obama administration's response to the government's gun scandal, and it isn't going to wash," he said.

"In that scandal, conducted by the Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. government allowed and even participated in the illegal transfer of thousands of firearms from the United States to Mexico," Snyder said. "Many of the guns were used in the commission of crimes in both countries, including in the murder of American law enforcement agents.

"The government called this Operation Fast and Furious under Project Gunrunner. Now Attorney General Eric Holder is shifting people around the department and even around the country in order to stamp out the bad publicity and the congressional investigation coming as a result of the scandal. However, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, apparently is not going to bite on this bone. He says he's going ahead with the investigation and will continue to hold public hearings on the government's gun mess."

Snyder said the keys players in the game of musical chairs is the reassigning of Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson  to the position of senior adviser on forensic science in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Programs.

Despite pressure not to cooperate with Issa, Melson testified in a closed-door hearing before Issa on July 4—significant not only because it was a Sunday and the nation’s birthday, but also because Melson brought his own lawyers, not DOJ lawyers.

Snyder said he is pleased that Issa has announced that he will hold more Fast and Furious hearings in September. "It's good news indeed.”

"It would be a good idea to scrap ATF and perhaps launch a full scale investigation of the Justice Department. It also would be a good idea to deep-six some of the nonsensical federal firearm laws now on the books, and reassert the individual Second Amendment civil right of law-abiding American citizens to keep and bear arms without undue interference from nosy federal bureaucrats,” he said.

"In November of 2012, just a little over a year from now, American voters will have a chance to deep-six gun grabbing politicians in the White House and in Congress. It's not too early to get ready for a sea-change in American politics."\\
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=45930

Sellers prepare for gun silencers

Federal authorization required to purchase noise suppressor

Written by  Trace Christenson  The Enquirer

It will be several months before a Battle Creek gun shop owner said he will sell silencers, approved last week by Michigan's Attorney General.

"I don't have any suppressors in yet," said Joel Fulton, president of Southside Sportsman Club at 539 Capital Ave. S.W. "I placed an order last week and I have had several phone calls from customers."

Late last week Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, in a formal opinion, said Michigan law permits gun owners to obtain and use noise suppressors or silencers as long as they go through a federal permit process.

State law generally forbids sale or possession of the silencers but contains a specific exemption for those obtained with federal authorization, similar to permits required for automatic weapons.

Michigan becomes the 38th state to allow possession of gun silencers.

Fulton called the decision significant and delightful.

"It is no different than putting a muffler on a lawn mower," he said. "Once you shoot with the sound suppressed you won't go back. It is just so much better."

Fulton said the suppressors:

• Make shooting with friends more enjoyable because ear muffs won't be needed and with silencers people can talk to each other as they shoot which increases safety because of better communications among shooters.

• Allows shooting without disturbing neighbors. Hunters can sight their guns on land where they hunt without disturbing game.

• Will prevent ear damage if the gun owner is forced to fire in a room or other confined area.

Fulton said he believes criminals using silencers in movies and on television have tainted the public against the devices.

"We panic in the United States because in Hollywood only the assassins have silencers.

"The image is that every bad guy has a silencer,"he said.

Battle Creek Deputy Police Chief James Saylor said Sunday he has not fully analyzed the new opinion or possible implications but said he doesn't expect widespread problems.

"If it's legal to own and is obtained with the proper permits and the owner passes the screening qualifications and they can afford to own them, then with ability comes responsible ownership," Saylor said.

Applicants must undergo background checks including criminal and mental histories and obtain certification from local law enforcement.

Fulton said the silencers will cost $600 to $1,000 depending on the weapon used and buyers should expect to wait several months.

He said he ordered just over a dozen and hopes to have some in stock in a month.

Trace Christenson can be reached at 966-0685 or at tchrist@battlecreekenquirer.com

Trace Christenson can be reached at 966-0685 or tchrist@battlecreekenquirer.com.

Glocks and such: Phony outrage is well-worn shoe in US

Posted: Monday, September 5, 2011 12:00 am
A gun, by any other name, is just a gun. Unless it's a Glock semi-automatic pistol raffled off by Republicans in Pima County, which just happens to be the same county where Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 19 other people were shot, six of them killed.

Then it's an outrage.

Or so we're supposed to believe.

The 24-hour news cycle, the blogosphere and the Twitterverse erupted last week when Huffington Post pointed out that the Pima County Republican Party was raffling off a Glock 23 pistol, saying it's the same pistol that Jared Lee Loughner used Jan. 8 to shoot Giffords in the head.

It's not the same. Loughner used a Glock 19.

Liberals immediately decided it was an affront to Giffords and the others shot that day and dubbed it an insensitive outrage, yet it's legal to purchase and own a gun in the United States and it's legal to raffle a gun in Arizona.

The politics of outrage is a well-worn shoe in America. One pol or another is always trying to fan the flames of outrage to gin up votes. It works so well that we're constantly barraged with outrages to the point that we're permanently outraged.

In a country where everyone is outraged, no one is. Yet there are some things happening in this country we should be angry about and one of them is our inability to come to terms with the Second Amendment.

Consider the fake fury by conservatives over the ATF Fast and Furious scandal, an attempted sting operation by federal agents who allowed "straw buyers" to legally purchase thousands of assault rifles from Arizona gun dealers so that the guns could be tracked to Mexican drug cartels. The ATF lost track of many of the guns and one of those guns ended up at the shooting scene where smugglers killed Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

Conservatives say they are outraged about it and are desperately trying to pin the scandal on President Obama.

But in the three years prior to Operation Fast and Furious, several newspapers had written investigative stories about Mexican drug cartels smuggling tens of thousands of legally purchased American guns into Mexico.

Rather than be outraged by that fact, conservatives saw the stories as an insidious attack on the Second Amendment by attempting to conflate Mexico's drug war with America's gun laws. And that was outrageous, they said.

Thousands of Mexicans getting slaughtered with those American guns was not an outrage. Until a Democratic administration tried to do something about it and blew it. Then it was.

Since the Loughner shooting, people using guns of various makes, types and calibers have killed about two dozen people in Pima County.

Are Democrats outraged by that? Or are they only outraged when Republicans try to raise money raffling off a gun made by the same manufacturer of a gun used to shoot a Democrat?

By the way, Giffords owns a Glock.

Where's the outrage?
For a longer version of this editorial, go to http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords AZ GOP Auctions Gun Like
The One Used to Shoot Her

http://www.tmz.com/2011/09/03/gabrielle-giffords-congresswoman-shooting-arizona-republican-gun-auction/
So far ... this wins craziest story of the weekend ....The Republican Party in Pima County, AZ is raffling off a gun almost identical to the one used to shoot the Congresswoman in that very same county ... Gabrielle Giffords.

The online newsletter (see below) went out last Friday and features on page 3 a chance to win "a Glock 23 .40 handgun for just 10 bucks." But hang on -- if your name is drawn, you don't just win the gun ... you get "three 12-round magazines, adjustable grips, and a case."


A Glock 19 handgun was allegedly used by Jared Loughner in an attack on January 8, 2011 that injured 13 (including Rep. Giffords) and killed six.

Michael McNulty, Giffords' campaign manager, told the Arizona Republic he was "struggling for the words to describe my reaction" to the raffle.

The interim chairman of the Pima County GOP told the paper he was surprised at the reaction, saying Rep. Giffords owned a Glock herself and was an outspoken supporter of the Second Amendment. He explained, "That Glock is no more responsible for those deaths and the congresswoman's injuries than a Number 2 pencil is responsible for cheating on a test."

Translation -- guns don't kill people, people kill people.

Real translation -- This guy doesn't have a clue.

Report: Manufacturers lost track of more than 16,000 guns since 2009

Washington (CNN) -- Thousands of firearms have gone missing from manufacturers' inventories since 2009 "without a record of being legally sold," according to a report released Thursday by a gun control advocacy group.

The report by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence put the number of missing weapons at 16,485.

"It is shocking that gun makers are so oblivious to public safety that they lose track of thousands of guns every year," Henigan, acting president of the Brady Center, said in a statement. "Given the lethality of its product, the gun industry has a special duty to act responsibly. Instead, it has a scandalous record of carelessness."

The Brady Center report suggests that some guns may never have had serial numbers stamped into them, making them virtually impossible to trace. The group says that the missing guns are often used by criminals precisely because they are so hard to trace.
The report does not mention which manufacturers are reported to having missing firearms. The Brady Center says the data was collected from a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives report that was presented to the gun industry last month.

But the report also states that ATF conducts their compliance examinations at only about 20% of gun dealers and manufacturers each year, and says as a result, "The 16,485 'missing' guns are likely a vast undercount of the total number of guns that disappeared from gun manufacturers in the last two and a half years."

Andrew Molchan, Publisher of American Firearms Industry Magazine, slammed the report in a statement to CNN.

"The Brady spin and implication that some manufacturers, whose names are not mentioned so we can't check the charges, are knowingly selling guns before they are logged into the manufacturer's records is absolutely ridiculous," Molchan said.

According to ATF statistics, more than 5 million firearms were made in the United States in 2008 by about 4,487 manufacturers. The federal law enforcement agency is in charge of inspecting companies that make and sell firearms to make sure they are in compliance with federal laws.

The ATF says about 600 agents did more than 10,000 inspections last year, but the Brady Center says the agency isn't able to do enough because it lacks manpower and money.

The ATF said it had not read the report and would not comment.

The Brady Center is an advocacy group for tightened gun laws and was named after Jim Brady, President Ronald Reagan's press secretary, who was shot in the head in the attempted assassination of Reagan in 1981.

http://cnn.site.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?expire=&title=Report%3A+Manufacturers+lost+track+of+more+than+16%2C000+guns+since+2009+-+CNN.com&urlID=459617937&action=cpt&partnerID=211911&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2011%2FUS%2F09%2F01%2Fmissing.guns.report%2F

Gunning for the truth

By Boston Herald Editorial Staff  |   Thursday, September 1, 2011  |  http://www.bostonherald.com/  |  Editorials

The man on whose watch the now infamous “Fast and Furious” anti-gun trafficking operation went afoul has now been sent off to where he will no longer be an embarrassment to the Obama administration.

Ah, we must be approaching another election season.

Kenneth Melson, acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms since 2009, will become a senior adviser on forensic science in the Office of Legal Policy, where presumably he won’t get into any more trouble.

Also being thrown under the Obama re-election bus was U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke, who oversaw prosecutions related to that same operation.

The idea behind Fast and Furious was to go after gun smugglers selling their wares to Mexican drug cartels. That was the idea, anyway. But the execution of the 15-month operation was flawed in the extreme. ATF lost track of at least 2,000 guns sold as part of the program. Two of the guns were found at the scene of a shootout in the Arizona desert last December in which a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed. Other ATF-bought guns were found at crime scenes in Mexico and on our side of the border.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been investigating the Fast and Furious operation. In the course of that probe they found e-mails indicating that Melson had been regularly informed about problems with the operation. The committee rather wisely isn’t abandoning its investigation just because Melson has been allowed to take the fall.

In fact, when questioned by congressional investigators Melson alluded to his frustration with Justice Department officials who had prohibited him from testifying before Congress for months.

“There are still many questions to be answered about what happened  . . .  and who else bears responsibility,” said Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

No kidding! The committee shouldn’t stop just when things are getting interesting.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/editorials/view.bg?articleid=1362827

Obama shakes up gun agency over botched Mexico sting

By Jeremy Pelofsky | Reuters – 19 mins ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration announced on Tuesday a major shake-up of the U.S. agency that botched an attempt to track arms flowing to drug cartels in Mexico after weapons were allowed to flow freely across the border.

Kenneth Melson, who has been acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was reassigned after admitting mistakes in the sting operation meant to try to crack down on weapons reaching violent drug gangs from U.S. gun stores.

In further fallout from the operation, the U.S. attorney for Arizona, Dennis Burke, has resigned effective immediately and the lead prosecutor on the case, Emory Hurley, has been reassigned too, according to an Obama administration official.

Another administration official said the shake-up at ATF was a chance for a "fresh start given everything they've gone through lately."

The sting operation, dubbed "Fast and Furious," has spawned congressional and internal Justice Department probes and put the Obama administration on the defensive about whether dangerous weapons were knowingly allowed to cross the border.

Authorities had hoped they would be able to follow the guns to cartel leaders, but ATF agents did not track the weapons after they were transferred from the initial buyer to others who smuggled them across the border. Some agents have testified that they were not allowed to continue the pursuit.

Attorney General Eric Holder and Melson both issued statements but steered clear of any comments about the controversy. Holder has referred the entire matter to the department's inspector general for an investigation.

Melson will be reassigned to the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy as an adviser on forensic science, the Justice Department said. The U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Todd Jones, will serve as acting ATF director starting on Wednesday.

MEXICO COMPLAINS ABOUT GUNS FLOWING

Mexican authorities have complained bitterly about the flow of guns from the United States across the border where gangs have battled with each other and with the Mexican authorities, straining ties between the two countries.

Some 42,000 have died since 2006 as a result of the turf wars. The congressional investigation has turned up evidence that guns sold in the sting have been showing up at numerous crime scenes in the United States and in Mexico.

U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry died in a December 2010 shootout on the American side of the border and two guns found there have been traced to the sting. It is not yet known if those guns were used to fire the fatal shots.

Some of the weapons recovered at crime scenes include powerful AK-47s and .50 caliber rifles.

Republicans in the U.S. Congress have been demanding the Obama administration explain who knew what and when about the ATF program, which was conceived of and run out of the agency's Phoenix division.

"There are still many questions to be answered about what happened in Operation Fast and Furious and who else bears responsibility," said Republican Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House of Representatives' Oversight Committee which is probing the matter.

"But these changes are warranted and offer an opportunity for the Justice Department to explain the role other officials and offices played in the infamous efforts to allow weapons to flow to Mexican drug cartels," he said.

For years the ATF has been without a director confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The position has been the source of tension between advocates and opponents of gun control.

President Barack Obama has nominated Andrew Traver of the agency's Chicago office to the job, but the gun industry has opposed him. Melson is a career federal employee.

Obama will need to nominate someone to fill the U.S. Attorney post. Burke previously served as chief of staff to Janet Napolitano when she was Arizona governor. He was interviewed earlier this month by congressional investigators, a spokeswoman for Issa said.

Melson was interviewed on July 4 by congressional investigators. At that time he acknowledged mistakes had been made and other law enforcement agencies had had critical information that they did not share about their

http://news.yahoo.com/atf-chief-reassigned-botched-sting-161949768.html