Fast, Furious and Fortune Telling

Tonight, I want to talk about the “Fast & Furious” scandal, which has been vehemently brought to our collective attention by the House Oversight Committee and one Daryl Issa here in these last few weeks. 

Make no mistake, of all of the fuck ups, mistakes and things done wrong in this massive apparatus called the US government, either by institutional flaw or simply poor judgment, this failed Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms program is but one of many. To recap for those new to the topic, “Fast & Furious” was an attempt by ATF agents to crack down on multiple levels of the flow of firearms to the Mexican drug cartels by monitoring how the perfectly legal massive sales of assault rifles and other weapons in states like Arizona ended up in the hands of organized paramilitary criminal syndicates in Northern Mexico. 

At this point, it hasn’t yielded any tremendous results, but going after criminals in another country is inherently difficult, particularly when law enforcement officials in THAT country can’t get these guys. That said, the conservative right wing took a whole ’nother tack on this issue, culminating in the AG of the USA likely being indicted for contempt of Congress tomorrow. Without a doubt, Rep. Issa’s assault stems from opinions he publicly endorsed just a few months back, and which derive from nut-case, Tea Bagger, reactionary extremism. Issa thinks that Fast & Furious was enacted without any chance of success for the very results that such a failure would engender. More guns in the hands of these criminals would lead to more gun violence which would lead to more pressure for gun control laws. In the mind of Daryl Issa, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, Fast & Furious was actually a diabolical attack on the 2nd ammendment  

This tin-foil hat conspiracy theory may get traction amongst the Fox News faithful, but in the larger community, it’s not enough to engender the kind of Watergatish outrage the Republicans are hoping for. Consequently, a second argument has been developed parallel to the NRA bedlam. One of the guns that ended up in Mexico killed a Border Patrol officer. The mainstream alternative to the anti-2nd-Ammendment conspiracy outrage is the simple fact that the Obama administration allowed guns to “walk.” In it‘s fruits, the strategy was a bad idea. 

That may be right. That said, the whole strategy of letting guns “walk” into Mexico in hopes of later tracking them was thought up by the Justice Department of GW Bush and has since been killed by Obama’s Eric Holder. Then comes today’s news in the form of THIS ARTICLE (IMPORTANT!!! HISTORICAL!! read it!) from Fortune Magazine. Not the NY Times, the Huffington Post or some other liberal enclave. It’s from Fortune fucking magazine! 

See, what I find most interesting here is not that we’re talking about a few hundred firearms here while the Mexican government estimates that 2,000 guns make their way into Mexico from the USA every single day, nor that ATF agents could NOT arrest even obvious straw-men gun buyers in the state of Arizona. Instead, it’s that these kinds of lax gun laws exist in one of our border states! From the article:

Customers can legally buy as many weapons as they want in Arizona as long as they're 18 or older and pass a criminal background check. There are no waiting periods and no need for permits, and buyers are allowed to resell the guns. "In Arizona," says Voth, "someone buying three guns is like someone buying a sandwich."

By 2009 the Sinaloa drug cartel had made Phoenix its gun supermarket and recruited young Americans as its designated shoppers or straw purchasers. Voth and his agents began investigating a group of buyers, some not even old enough to buy beer, whose members were plunking down as much as $20,000 in cash to purchase up to 20 semiautomatics at a time, and then delivering the weapons to others.

I’ve heard from other sources that some of these straw purchasers were unemployed and on food stamps but would regularly plop down ten figures to buys guns. Guns they used to do what? Hunt the Arizona Jackalope? Here’s the thing: It is ONLY because of Rep Issa’s attention to this matter that I became aware that is perfectly legal for any Arizonan to buy 100 AK-47’s or other non-hunting assault rifles at a gun store without any restriction other than criminal history, and then step out into the parking lot and sell those guns to whomever they wish. See, the ATF agents might have WANTED to stem the flow of guns to the Mexican drug cartels, but they couldn’t! These guns weren’t “walked” into Mexico by permission of the ATF; the ATF was powerless to stop them! 

This lax law in regards to guns lead to the death of that Border Patrol agent & the loss of thousands of lives south of the border in Mexico. That is an expression of a law that needs to change. Yes, I myself, one of millions who have the potential of actually understanding the facts behind Fast & Furious, am significantly moved towards supporting tougher gun laws due the facts of this case. 

I am the original, “crazy” conspiracy theory become manifest. I wanted stricter laws on guns before, but this case makes the need that much more self-evident. I never would have thought this way without the attention brought to F&F by Daryl Issa. Without the right-wing outrage over trivial minutae, I would have never even known about the bigger picture here, manifested by Fortune’s article today. 

Congratulations, right wing nutcases! Through your attention to F&F, you have created, or are beginning to create, the very anti-gun sentiment you so feared. Not because of violence caused by the guns themselves, but simply by highlighting absurdly lax gun laws that already existed in these border states. 

The ATF didn’t need to “let guns walk”, as the Fortune article pointed out today, instead, the guns were walking all by themselves, and thanks to laws endorsed by the NRA, there was nothing the ATF could do to stop it. 

Be careful what you crazily prognosticate: it may come true.