Guess where the cartels get the bulk of their illegal weapons from.

Tip: it's a former Mexican state with liberal gun laws.

Why a gunrunning scandal codenamed "Fast and Furious," a program run secretly by the U.S. government that sent thousands of firearms over an international border and directly into the hands of criminals, hasn't been pursued by an army of reporters all trying to be the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein is a story in itself.

Fast and Furious was an operation so cloak-and-dagger Mexican authorities weren't even notified that thousands of semi-automatic firearms were being sold to people in Arizona thought to have links to Mexican drug cartels. According to ATF whistleblowers, in 2009 the U.S. government began instructing gun storeowners to break the law by selling firearms to suspected criminals. ATF agents then, again according to testimony by ATF agents turned whistleblowers, were ordered not to intercept the smugglers but rather to let the guns "walk" across the U.S.-Mexican border and into the hands of Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.

A Jan. 8, 2010 briefing paper from the ATF Phoenix Field Division Group VII says: "This investigation has currently identified more than 20 individual connected straw purchasers…. To date (September 2009-present) this group has purchased in excess of 650 firearms (mainly AK-47 variants) for which they have paid cash totaling more than $350,000."

This is an important fact because the U.S. Justice Department hasn't made it clear to tell congressional investigators when the Fast and Furious operation began and who authorized it; as a result, this ATF briefing paper's mention of September 2009 is thus far the earliest we can trace the operation.

The next important event we know of occurred in October 2009 when the ATF's Phoenix Field Division established a gun-trafficking group called "Group VII." Group VII began using the strategy of allowing suspects to walk away with illegally purchased guns, according to a report from the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the staff of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. The report says, "The purpose was to wait and watch, in hope that law enforcement could identify other members of a trafficking network and build a large, complex conspiracy case…. Group VII initially began using the new gunwalking tactics in one of its investigations to further the Department's strategy. The case was soon renamed 'Operation Fast and Furious.'"

This report and later official explanations from the ATF say the Fast and Furious program was created to deal with the problem that arresting low-level suspects doesn't necessarily help ATF agents get to the heads of Mexican cartels.

On Oct. 26, 2009, a month or so after Fast and Furious seems to have been initiated, a document shows that a teleconference was held between 13 officials. One of the issues discussed was the possible "adoption of the Department's strategy for Combating Mexican Drug Cartels." The officials listed to have been in on the call included Kenneth Melson, who was then the director of the ATF, Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI and a number of attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice. B. Todd Jones, the current director of the ATF, was not listed in the document, but the title he held in September 2009 is listed as being in on the conference call.

Later in 2009 the ATF started the Fast and Furious program by allowing firearms to be smuggled from U.S. gun stores into the arsenals of Mexican criminal gangs. As these guns wouldn't be seen again until they resurfaced in crimes (there were no tracking devices installed or other means to trace these guns), the only purpose for letting these guns "walk" seems to be to back up the president's position that guns used in Mexican crimes mostly come from the U.S. (Though the Obama administration insists the gun sales were a part of a new crime-fighting technique.)

More here- https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2011/09/28/fast-and-furious-just-might-be-...

yep,
thats one of the crazier ones.

china also gives the cartels weapons grade fentanyl to poison yanks with in exchange for mining rights to minerals for EV batteries.

oh heres a fun fact

the most common ethnicity of a person calling ICE  us immigration and customs enforcement in the state of california is a latino.  the latinos literally dont want illegals to stay.

neither, it seems , do the residents of marthas vinyard who couldnt make roon for even 1 busload of illegals 

looked at the statistics they might realise they have been conned.

they have been conned.

Baronvonrort wrote on May 3^rd, 2023 at 5:15pm:


Strange. An army of journalists have covered this story in the fake news media, Baron.

Thanks for the info though - I had never heard of this. Why did the ATF conduct this operation?

Baronvonrort wrote on May 3^rd, 2023 at 5:04pm:

Where exactly does it show that?
Australia has more than 3.5 million registered firearms, an average of four for each licensed gun owner. So 4% of population own a gun.