Sipsey Street Irregulars: John Richardson: "Electronic Tracking Revisited."

Thursday, April 21, 2011

John Richardson: "Electronic Tracking Revisited."

Writing at No Lawyers -- Just Guns and Money, John asks some excellent questions about tracking the Gunwalker weapons electronically.

Univision's Jorge Ramos reports on John Dodson's statement that they weren't:

While carrying out this initiative, dubbed "Operation Fast and Furious," federal agents allowed more than 1,700 illegal firearms to pass into Mexico from the U.S., and without notifying President Felipe Calderon's administration. The operation commenced in late 2009.

According to John Dodson, a Phoenix-based agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the plan was to funnel the firearms into Mexico so that agents in the U.S. could track their movements, in hopes that the guns would lead authorities to criminal gangs and drug traffickers. The problem, Dodson told me in an interview, was that the arms were not specially marked or microchipped, so keeping track of them proved to be extremely difficult. These guns -- many of which were particularly destructive types of semiautomatic handguns and rifles -- may have already been used to kill innocent people in Mexico. It's impossible to know if, and how many, of these guns are being used to commit crimes.

But while the bureau is now reviewing its gun-tracking strategies, "controlled delivery" of firearms into Mexico has not ceased. "None of these people have said this activity is going to stop," Dodson said. "No one has said we've suspended the policy pending these reviews."

Which leaves us with one of John's questions: "If they stopped the electronic tracking, this leads to the question why? Was it too expensive, too unreliable, or what? Did someone in the Obama Administration make the decision to discontinue the electronic tagging and tracking? Again, why?"

All good questions to ask some administration scofflaws under oath.

3 comments:

Cal said...: I think you're mis-interpreting "electronic tracking".

I don't believe any microchipping or anything of the kind ever happened. I think electronic tracking simply refers to using their eTrace database to track where the guns were sold from, and where they were picked up.

Remember that for the most part the stores sold the guns and contacted the ATF. ATF never had hands on 99% of the guns, so they couldn't have done anything to them.

The only time I can think of where they even had a chance to microchip any guns would have been with their confidential informant they had working with Osorio, but I doubt they did anything even there.

"electronic tracking" == atf spin masters making it sound like they were on top of things.; April 22, 2011 at 12:21 AM
Anonymous said...: "If they stopped the electronic tracking, this leads to the question why?"

This should be obvious--they didn't want the drug cartel guns being traced back to their source in the BATF/Justice Department.

MALTHUS; April 22, 2011 at 5:10 AM
WarriorClass III said...: Perhaps they are tracking guns domestically with their electronic system; perhaps even large cap mags...

It's not like they actually cared about where they went in Mexico, as long as they went there.

Perhaps we need to disassemble all those mags we've been stock piling and see if there's something between the springs.

WarriorClass
III; April 22, 2011 at 5:20 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Thursday, April 21, 2011

John Richardson: "Electronic Tracking Revisited."

3 comments:

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