Guns Obama administration handed to Mexican drug lords continue to turn up at crime scenes

Thursday, December 20, 2012 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: Fast and Furious, Obama administration, gun running

(NaturalNews) Even as President Obama searches for a way to take away your right of self-defense in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, guns his own administration let "walk" across the border into the hands of Mexican drug gangs continue to show up at crime scenes both north and south of the border.

The latest incident involved a Romanian-made AK-47 semi-automatic rifle that was used in a shooting that has claimed the life of a Mexican beauty queen.

According to CBS News, officials have confirmed that the rifle recovered at the scene is definitely one of thousands of firearms that Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents allowed straw buyers to purchase in the United States with the intent of tracking them back to the Mexican drug gangs as part of Operation Fast and Furious.

Congressional investigators said the crime scene was probably one where a recent shootout took place between purported members of the Sinaloa drug cartel and the Mexican army. During the gun battle, Sinaloa beauty queen Maria Susana Flores Gamez and four others were killed, the report said.

How many more Fast and Furious guns will kill?

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa - who has been tracking the botched operation - said the Justice Department, which oversees ATF, did not notify Congress of the recovery of the Fast and Furious weapon in November, though the senator had previously requested an accounting of all the weapons which ultimately surface in the case. During Fast and Furious, the ATF allowed more than 2,000 weapons - including huge, long-range .50 caliber rifles - fall into the hands of deadly drug cartels and other criminal enterprises. Most of these weapons have never been recovered.

The Romanian rifle discovered at the latest Mexican crime scene was a WASR-10, a type of AK-47, officials said. It was found Nov. 23 in Ciudad Guamuchil, Sinaloa, Mexico - the same area and weekend of the shootout where Flores Gamez was killed.

A trace report shows the weapon was bought by Uriel Patino, the Fast and Furious suspect who is suspected of buying more than 700 weapons while under the watch of the BATF. CBS News reported that records show he bought the rifle and nine additional semi-automatic weapons at a gun store in Arizona March 16, 2010.

Reports said Grassley has already launched another letter at Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department seeking answers, asking specifically whether department officials had any plans to notify Congress "that a Fast and Furious weapon had been recovered."

Not surprisingly, Justice officials provided no immediate response to CBS News.

Two other AK-47-type weapons tied to the operation were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, in December 2010. Also, earlier reports noted that guns trafficked under Fast and Furious were traced to the murder of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico in February 2011. The families of both agents are suing federal officials for alleged negligence.

By September 2011, ATF officials estimated that weapons tied to Fast and Furious had been found at eight crime scenes in Mexico.

Guns for Mexican drug lords but not for law-abiding Americans

Lawmakers like Grassley who have been trying to learn all of the details surrounding the botched gun-walking operation have been stymied by the Obama administration at every turn.

In June, for instance, President Obama extended executive privilege to Holder regarding documents related to the operation, ahead of a planned meeting between the attorney general and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to turn over scores of documents sought for months by the panel.

In addition to other information regarding the operation, Issa's panel was attempting to find out who prepared a now-retracted letter from Feb. 4, 2011, in which Justice claimed the U.S. did not knowingly help smuggle guns across the border into Mexico, including those later found at Terry's murder scene.

Even as the current White House regime stumps for new gun-control laws in the wake of the tragic murders in Newtown, Conn., it continues to thwart efforts by Congress to hold those accountable for allowing the same type of guns to be sold to dangerous Mexican drug gangs who have in turn used them to murder federal agents. That sets a new standard for hypocrisy.

Sources:

http://www.cbsnews.com

http://voices.yahoo.com

http://www.newsroomamerica.com/story/256390.html

http://www.naturalnews.com