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.

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

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