Have you heard of the Fast and Furious? Not the horrible, cheesy Vin Diesel movies, but the gun-tracking operation run by the federal government.
Come to think of it though, the Arizona-based gun tracking operation could have been some stupid plot point in one of those stupid movies.
Here's how the federal government and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives thought it would go.
They would plant agents at Phoenix gun-shows, and allow suspected “straw buyers,” or people thought to be buying guns for the drug cartels, to purchase guns, and these were no pop guns. They were big guns, serious guns, semi-automatic weapons, AK-47s and the like.
They would then track these guns back to the drug cartels and bust the bad guys. Everyone wins, goes home happy.
This is how it actually went down.
The federal agents sold the guns to straw buyers, which went flawlessly, and then they lost some of them. By some, I mean a few thousand, according to a Miami Herald story. Then these lost guns started showing up at crime scenes both in the U.S. and in Mexico.
Doesn't that sound like a Diesel movie? And then he would grab the head of the drug cartels by the throat and slam him against a wall until he fessed up and revealed the secret location of the drug money, and the Vin would save us all. Somehow.
But, that's not what happened at all. In fact, what happened was that Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed with one of the guns involved in the Fast and Furious operation.
Then the curtain was lifted and the whole debacle was revealed to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
Attorney General Eric Holder would not apologize for Terry's death, but “certainly regrets” what happened. What a fat lot of good that does Terry's family.
This is just another shocking example of complete incompetence from the federal government. Holder is claiming he was not informed of this horribly planned and executed operation, which is honestly not surprising.
The level of incompetence evidenced by the federal government and the ATF is both hilarious and worrying.
At a time of total economic insecurity, when 9 percent of the population is unemployed, this scandal, along with the ensuing revelations of incompetence and misplaced authority, is not going to help Americans feel any more confident in their government.
This scandal has only reinforced the idea that the federal government operates as an incompetent bureaucracy.
This is exactly the opposite image needed if the country is going to regain any faith in its leaders.
Reach the columnist at omcquarr@asu.edu
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