Transplanted Masshole and former federal prosecutor Adam Schiff.
Schiff wants more oversight of ATF.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, wants the federal government to exert more oversight on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives by giving Congress the ability to request gun trace information.
The Schiff request - in the form of a rider to an appropriations bill - comes in the wake of revelations about Operation Fast and Furious.
Under the program ATF agents were instructed to allow guns purchased by known criminals to be illegally trafficked across the border to Mexico in an effort to connect those guns to drug cartels.
The operation resulted in hundreds of guns being transferred to cartels, which were later found at crime scenes and submitted into the U.S. eTrace system, which stores gun-trace data and is maintained by the ATF. However, due to a rider that has been a feature of Appropriations bills since 2003, known as the Tiahrt Amendment, the ATF cannot provide that data to any entity other than a law enforcement agency, Schiff said in a statement posted on his website.
"Operation Fast and Furious, which resulted in the deaths of both American and Mexican citizens, exemplifies the need to do away with regulations that handicap Congress' oversight responsibilities," Schiff said. "Trace data is critically important to both law enforcement operations that target gun traffickers, as well as to the congressional oversight of those operations."
U.S. lawmakers attempting to gain information about the program and the guns it circulated were forced to ask the Mexican government for trace information.
"It is ludicrous that Congress would need to ask a foreign government to request documents in the possession of a U.S. agency, the ATF," Schiff said. "This amendment would facilitate the investigation of Fast and Furious and restore Congress' ability to do adequate oversight. If the committee is unwilling to untie the Congress' hands, I would hope the full House will."
4 comments:
Unless I'm missing something, this was defeated 27-20 back on July 13--I've been gathering info on this to do a column that will have to wait until after today's WarOnGuns radio show...
Congress has a demonstrated ability to take a bad situation, make it worse and then demand more power and money to "fix" the worsening problem they themselves helped to create.
Representative Adam Schiff's, (D-CA) "give trace data to Congress" proposal takes a problem that is endemic to three or four states and
uses it as a wedge tool to repeal the Tiahrt Amendment.
This amendment was passed because trace data was being used to create a computer database in violation of the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986.
FOPA was largely written to correct ATF abuses stemming from the Gun Control Act of 1968.
Now, Schiff proposes to use an example of ATF gunrunning abuses as an excuse to eliminate reforms that were adopted to correct ATF abuses!?
There is no reasoning with these people. They will have to be defeated politically, if at all possible and militarily if it is not.
MALTHUS
WV: expetr--the void left after being emasculated by Schiff's legislation.
Mike, they may not need Schiffhead, read this troubling article: http://biggovernment.com/awrhawkins/2011/08/03/can-our-gun-rights-survive-boehner-and-reids-new-super-congress/
This is particularly worrisome.
Couldn't get Schiff's creepy smile out of my head........just looked again......Shave the hair.....this guy is a dead ringer for Jared Loughner.........freaky!!
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