ATF To Require Gun Retailers In Four States To Alert Feds To Frequent Buyers Of High-Powered Rifles

WASHINGTON — In an effort to stem the illicit flow of weapons into Mexico, the Justice Department announced Monday that all gun shops in four Southwest border states will be required to alert the federal government to frequent buyers of high-powered rifles.

The new policy comes amid criticism of a flawed federal probe aimed at dismantling large-scale arms trafficking networks along the Arizona border with Mexico.

In the probe, called Operation Fast and Furious, several agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives say they were inexplicably ordered by superiors to stop tracking some small-time "straw" buyers who purchased large numbers of weapons apparently destined for drug cartels.

Twenty low-level gun buyers have been charged in the operation. In December, two assault rifles that one of the now-indicted small-time buyers under scrutiny in Fast and Furious had purchased from a gun shop in Glendale, Ariz., turned up at the scene of a shootout that killed Brian Terry, an agent of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In recent congressional testimony, ATF agent John Dodson estimated that 1,800 guns in Fast and Furious were unaccounted for and that about two-thirds are probably in Mexico.

Under the new policy, federal firearms licensees in Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico must report purchases of two or more of some types of rifles by the same person in a five-day span. The requirement applies to purchases of semi-automatic rifles that have detachable magazines and a caliber of greater than .22.

ATF estimates it will generate 18,000 reports a year.

Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the new reporting measure will improve the ATF's ability to disrupt illegal weapons trafficking networks that funnel firearms to criminal organizations

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the new policy "is exactly what ATF agents on the ground told Congress – that reporting multiple sales of military-grade assault weapons is a crucial tool to identify and disrupt Mexican drug cartels engaged in gun trafficking."

One of the critics of Operation Fast and Furious called the new policy "the height of hypocrisy." The Obama administration is restricting the gun rights of border state citizens, "when the administration knowingly and intentionally allowed guns to be trafficked into Mexico," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas.

"Limiting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens is not going to solve the problem," Smith said.

Mexico's federal security spokesman, Alejandro Poire, praised Obama's action.

ATF estimates the requirement will cover nearly 8,500 gun store operators in the four states, though less than 30 percent of those operators are expected to have multiple sales to report.

ATF will retain the information and if no investigative leads have been realized after two years, it will be purged.

Holders of federal firearms licenses already report multiple sales of handguns. The results go to the National Tracing Center, and ATF says it has led to successful prosecutions for firearms trafficking.

Comments

[dbrett480]

07:50 PM on 07/20/2011

I guess the ATF wants to be the only organization sending weapons to cartels.

[theshadowsmith]

07:30 PM on 07/19/2011

Not so fast there. Another government edict shot down by the elected officials.

First, on Wed. July 13, by a vote of 25 to 16, the committee approved Rep. Denny Rehberg’s (R-Mont.) amendment to the 2012 Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies appropriations bill, prohibiting the BATFE from requiring firearm dealers in states bordering Mexico to file reports on certain rifle sales. The Justice Department had announced earlier in the week that the BATFE would soon begin requiring dealers to file the reports on individuals who buy two or more detachable-magazine semi-automatic rifles larger than .22 caliber within a period of five business days.

“For more than a decade, efforts to track rifle purchases and create a national gun registry have failed to gain support in Congress, so the ATF is working to implement these regulations using rules written by unelected bureaucrats,” Rep. Rehberg said. "I'm going to keep this government accountable to the people."

[Fundamental2A]

11:04 AM on 07/15/2011

It seems to me that this is also an attempt to label all semi-auto firearms as especially “Dangerous” and anything larger than a starter caliber as “High Power”. It’s really no different than past attempts to label cheap guns as “Saturday Night Specials”, military looking arms as “Assault Weapons”, and penetrating ammo as “Cop Killer”. Regardless, The People have a Fundamental Right to Keep and Bear those Arms. To survive a constitutional challenge, enacted legislation and executive orders will have to survive analysis that the provision was narrowly tailored to achieve its goal in the absence of other options that do not infringe the right. In this case you could have the ATF stop sending guns to Mexico instead of requiring legal purchases to be tracked.

[Tao21Zen]

03:38 PM on 07/15/2011

Using the "inherently dangerous" label has been a tactic of the anti-gun community to try and get class action lawsuits raised against gun manufacturers to sue them out of business. It works like this:

"In tort law, strict liability is the imposition of liability on a party without a finding of fault (such as negligence or tortious intent). The plaintiff need only prove that the tort occurred and that the defendant was responsible. The law imputes strict liability to situations it considers to be inherently dangerous."

http://goo.gl/cLkTX

The law assumes manufactures are responsible (liable) for damages that occur due to the use of their product under the standard of Strict Liability, even if the manufacturers are deemed not at fault, if their product is classified as "inherently dangerous." Under strict Liability, all that has to shown is causation. What's more, they can try to use the designation of "inherent dangerous" to claim that their products have a "design defect" opening the manufacturer to Absolute Liability, where neither fault more causation has to be shown.

Without this classification of "inherently dangerous", attempts to sue gun manufacturer can't use Strict Liability or Absolute Liability, but instead have to meet the legal standard for fault and proximate cause under a claim of Negligence.

[leonardstique1]

02:26 PM on 07/14/2011

This is going to wind up in court.The BATF simply does not have legislative authority to require reporting of multiple LONG gun sales. Handgun sales are already covered, but the BATF cannot pass laws on its own. This is clearly a violation of the division of powers

[Jerry Bourbon]

12:00 PM on 07/14/2011

Will this new regulation cause BATF to stop trafficking weapons to cartels in Mexico and MS-13 members in El Salvador?

[Tao21Zen]

03:41 PM on 07/15/2011

No, because the current laws on the books prohibiting Straw Purchases didn't stop them from doing so.

[Rooster Coburn]

07:07 PM on 07/13/2011

So Holder commits multiple felonies thru the "Project Gunwalker" affair and now the Obama regime tries to blame it on legitimate gun stores?  I would imagine that Congress will have the last say.

[Tao21Zen]

03:44 PM on 07/15/2011

You must see an imaginary Congress that doesn't bow their heads and tuck their tails in obeisance every time Obama opens his mouth to them. Just look at how he pushed healthcare through, despite the majority of Americans being against it.

[OdinsEye]

06:57 PM on 07/13/2011

This has nothing to do with if the rifles are high power. In fact most of the rifle sales which will be reported will be low power rifles. Very poor reporting.

[ScorpioTop]

05:33 PM on 07/13/2011

The problem is about gun proliferation. Gun apologists act like guns grow on trees. Gun manufacturers provide the means for slaughter,

[David Carson]

05:58 PM on 07/13/2011

ST--it must chap your cheeks that your desire for complete civilian disarmament is not going to happen

[ScorpioTop]

07:57 PM on 07/13/2011

Gun proliferation is not the same thing as disarmament. Gun apologists preach the more guns the better, but it isn't so. Coddling gun manufacturers won't make the body count go down.

[Old Jarhead]

06:52 PM on 07/13/2011

It would be nice if the ATF would stop shipping modern sporting rifles to such places as Mexico, and the cartels, and to Honduras, and the MS-13 gang.

[ScorpioTop]

09:35 PM on 07/15/2011

Would be nice if gun manufacturers didn't profit from the carnage.

[Jerry Bourbon]

03:53 PM on 07/13/2011

We will know the government is serious about gun trafficking to Mexico when Eric Holder is arrested and held for extradition to Mexico.

Until then, this is just an attempt to disarm law abiding Americans.

[Tao21Zen]

08:54 AM on 07/13/2011

How many times do we have to point out that the ballistics for the common hunting rifles like a .308 Winchester and .30-06 Springfield are much more powerful that for a dreaded AR15 or AK47. Here it goes one more time. Power as measured in ft-lbs of energy:

.223 Remington (AR15) = 1100-1300 ft-lbs
7.62x39mm (AK47) = 1400-1600 ft-lbs
.308 Winchester = 2500-2900 ft-lbs
.30-06 Springfield = 2800-3100 ft-lbs

When it comes to "power', military "assault rifle" calibers, even in their civilian counterparts, are at the low end of the spectrum.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.223_Remington
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62%C3%9739mm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.308_Winchester
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.30-06_Springfield

[PavePusher]

11:01 PM on 07/12/2011

Huff'n'Puff, your title is a lie. .22's are not "High-Powered Rifles". Neither are AR15's, AK47's, or .45 ACP carbines, all of which would be reported under this law. Your scare tactics in the face of your own demonstrated ignorance are a violation of the First Amendment, and I demand that you immediately cease and desist telling lies.

[OdinsEye]

07:08 PM on 07/13/2011

To be honest, it is an AP piece, not an HP article.

[AmosKnows]

10:38 PM on 07/12/2011

In an effort to stem the illicit flow of weapons into Mexico.

Just a joke really when you consider Obama and Holder were sending guns in to Mexico - probably as a means to do just this. In fact Holder lied to congress. See this:

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-proof-that-holder-lied-and-people.html

[barry444]

06:44 PM on 07/12/2011

Didn't Congress already tell them they couldn't do this? And they did it anyway?

Sounds like nothing's changing over at the ATF. Been making up policy and ignoring Congress for years...

[methnkng]

01:32 PM on 07/12/2011

Funny, earlier today there was a Huffington Post report about the family of the border patrol agent murdered by an illegal alien member of the Mexican drug cartel. They want to sue our government because the feds acutally gave that gun used to kid the American agent to the cartel. But that article sure was pulled fast, and now we have this article whitewashing what our government is doing.

[Jean Bastien]

08:08 PM on 07/12/2011

Good eye! I'm looking for Fast and Furious here and all I keep running into is Vin Diesel!!!

[Tao21Zen]

09:24 AM on 07/13/2011

And you most certainly won't find any that reveal President Obama's budget funded "Fast and Furious" under the BATFE's "Operation Gunrunner." The mainstream medium is also not saying anything at all about this. Imagine that!

The US Government agency responsible for enforcing firearms laws, in a project directly funded by name by the President's budget, illegally traffics firearms into foreign countries where these same weapons end up in drug cartel hands and are used to kill innocents, including a US border agent, and the media is turning a blind eye to it all. This just sickens me.

[Grumpy Man]

11:03 AM on 07/12/2011

Evidently there are those in power in Washingstoned who want us to believe that they believe that multimillionaire drug dealers have to get their AR-15's and AK-47's from folks who smuggle a dozen or two at a time southward.

I don't know about you but if I was a multimillionaire drug dealer operating south of the border I'd be looking for corrupt officials in Nicaragua or Honduras to buy full auto weapons, hand grenades, rocket launchers, etc... from.

By the way, just where are those cartels getting their true military grade weaponry from???

Thoughts?

[themainpoint]

12:11 PM on 07/12/2011

What on earth? This is the craziest thing i've ever heard. Any opinions? http://www.naturalnews.com/032934_ATF_illegal_firearms.html

"(NaturalNews) It is now a widely-reported fact that under the Obama administration, U.S. federal agents actively placed over 30,000 fully-functional weapons into the hands of Mexican drug gangs, then halted all surveillance and tracking activities of where those weapons were going.

This is not a conspiracy theory, nor a piece of fiction. It is now an openly-admitted fact that this was pulled off by the BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, more commonly called "ATF") under orders from Washington. The program was called "Fast and Furious."

Even Reuters is now covering the news and reporting how members of Congress are outraged to learn that this happened (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011...)."

"(Reuters) - U.S. firearms agents told lawmakers on Wednesday they were instructed to only watch as hundreds of guns were bought, illegally resold and sent to Mexico where drug-related violence has raged for years."

[OntheBorder]

01:00 PM on 07/12/2011

Not only that but some of those weapons were traced to the murder of a US Border Patrol Agent.
Eric Holder's BATF is complicit in the murder of Mexican and US citizens on both sides of the border.

[Jean Bastien]

08:09 PM on 07/12/2011

Yes I heard of this a couple weeks ago. Truly shocking! Got to be one of the dumbest sting operations ever, and a testament to the failed war on drugs.