Last month Wal-Mart announced it would ramp up weapons sales at its outlets, cutting back on floor space set aside for electronics in hopes of reviving its flagging stock.
But it is the guns walking out of America and into Mexico that has the pushed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) on the back foot—especially with new reports linking American guns, part of a contentious ATF program, to the attack on a Mexican government helicopter.
ATF launched a program to track drug cartels by allowing guns and ammunition to walk across the border, which would allow for bureau officials to track its movements.
But what was supposed to be a clandestine operation became a major headache for the bureau after an agent, who was in on the plan objected to the method employed and leaked the story to the media.
According to several reports based on ATF documents, some of the guns that have been sold from within the United States, have been found at crime sites on the Mexican site of the border. The arms have also been linked to the weapons used to kill an American border patrol agent inside Mexico last December.
The operation is being probed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which includes Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Grassley is focusing on the misleading statements that have been given to him by the Department of Justice. Grassley said, “Praise the lord for whistleblowers in this government because we don’t where the skeletons are buried.”
According to the LA Times, the ATF lost track of hundreds of guns it had let go into the hands of dealers in the hopes of tracing it to the drug cartels.
Sylvia Longmire, a former special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, says this was supposed to be like any other sting operation used by law-enforcement agencies for decades. “The difference is, most sting operations involve illegal drugs,” Longmire says.
Typically an officer sells illegal drugs to a buyer and then tracks the movement of the drug to the eventual buyer. The same plans were laid out for the guns. But Longmire points out a major difference that was highlighted by one of her followers on Twitter.
“With illegal drugs, the person using them is doing so voluntarily,” she says. “With guns, the victim of their misuse doesn’t want to die and is killed involuntarily.”
While the tracking of some guns did lead to arrests, it is not known how many were used in crimes.
“Maybe they thought that a classic sting operation was the only way to catch the big fish,” Longmire says. “Tragically, it didn’t work out that way.”
