Sipsey Street Exclusive: Attack of the Gun Control Monkeys. "Joined at the hip." January 2011 Emails Demonstrate the Long Symbiotic Relationship Between Anti-Firearm Zealots and ATF Brass.

The Gun Control Monkeys -- ATF & The Joyce Foundation -- Joined at the hip.

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Roseanna Ander, executive director of the University of Chicago's Crime Lab, backed the Police Department while noting that "it would be great if we had more resources and more could be done."

She said she understood the argument set forth in the opinion — that people in high-crime areas might believe they'd be safer with a gun in their home. But research shows that gun availability leads to more bloodshed, not less, she said.

"I understand the concern about public safety, but that is not going to get you a safer public,'' Ander said. "That is a solution that doesn't fit the problem. It's putting gasoline on a fire. What we need is more water."

Ander said that rather than put more guns on the street, policies and strategies that "reduce the availability of guns (rather than) increase the availability of guns in these high-crime areas" should be considered. -- "Court took cheap shot at city's crime rate, Chicago officials contend. Ruling's references to high murder rate stun some city leaders," Chicago Tribune, 28 June 2010, an article on McDonald v. Chicago, the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Chicago's handgun ban.

The date is 25 January 2011. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry has been dead a month. In Phoenix, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke has finally indicted the Fast and Furious straw buyers, in an attempt to keep them under the thumb of DOJ and away from anybody who might talk about the formerly clandestine operation that this blog and others have been writing stories about for four weeks. The "big bust" is announced in this article at MyFoxPhoenix: "Gun Running Operation Uncovered in Arizona." In Martinsburg WV, Special Agent Benjamin R. Hayes, Chief of the Law Enforcement Support Branch at ATF's National Tracing Center (seen here in a training video) has seen the article and turns to his government computer to find out more. Sipsey Street has obtained a series of emails, beginning with Hayes' first, which are transcribed below. They give us a glimpse into the symbiotic relationship between ATF senior management and the anti-firearm zealots of the Joyce Foundation.

No, that's not 50s comedian Ernie Kovacs. That's ATF Chief of the Law Enforcement Support Branch Benjamin R. Hayes.

From: Hayes, Benjamin R. (REDACTED)

Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 01:26 PM

To: Ander, Roseanna

Subject: FW: Gun Running Operation Uncovered in Arizona

Interesting. I wonder if this will make the evening news

Benjamin R. Hayes

Special Agent

Chief, Law Enforcement Support Branch

National Tracing Center

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

244 Needy Road

Martinsburg, WV 25405

(REDACTED)

Don't embrace mediocrity!

Quid Opus, Opus Bene.

http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/local/phoenix/gun-running-operation-az-01252011#

Roseanna Ander, Executive Director, University of Chicago Crime Lab and Chicago attorney Myron M. Cherry

And who is Roseanna Ander?

Why she is Executive Director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, which has nothing to do with forensics or CSI and everything to do with laying the "scientific" predicate for more gun control. From the UCCL website:

Each year around the world, roughly 500,000 people are murdered. Millions more are the victims of other crimes, and billions of dollars worth of property are stolen. Unfortunately, relatively little is known about how best to address this major social problem. For example, a 2005 report from the National Academy of Sciences argued there is surprisingly little good evidence about effective ways to reduce gun violence in America. This is true despite the fact that countless new programs have been launched all over the world the past several decades to try to reduce violence. Yet programs are almost never implemented in a way that facilitates rigorous evaluation; this lack of feedback makes it difficult for policymakers to learn from experience.

The University of Chicago Crime Lab seeks to improve our understanding of how to reduce crime and violence by helping government agencies and non-profit organizations rigorously evaluate new pilot programs. . . . The Crime Lab began in April 2008 in partnership with the City of Chicago, and has been made possible by generous seed funding from the Joyce Foundation, the University of Chicago Office of the Provost, and the School of Social Service Administration through the Center for Health Administration Studies.

Among the Crime Lab’s ongoing projects is the Chicago Initiative to Reduce Gun Violence Among School Age Youth. Our recent "design competition" identified one promising project, out of more than 30 applications, that has the potential to reduce youth gun violence in Chicago.

The UCCL describes her bio thusly:

Prior to joining the Crime Lab, Ander served for 10 years as Program Officer for the Gun Violence program at the Joyce Foundation in Chicago, responsible for the foundation's $3 million in grant-making each year for research and other activities to understand and reduce gun violence. In addition she developed and implemented the Foundation's $6 million, three year Early Childhood Education initiative. Ander spear-headed a number of new Joyce Foundation initiatives to reduce youth gun violence including working with the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) to convene a national summit of law enforcement leaders around gun violence prevention. In addition, she oversaw the Foundation's work to promote the development and implementation of the National Violent Death Reporting System, which is now housed at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and being implemented in 17 states. Prior to joining the Joyce Foundation, she served as the Public Health Liaison for Attorney General Scott Harshbarger of Massachusetts. She holds a Master of Science degree in health policy from Harvard School of Public Health.

Ah, yes, the Joyce Foundation. From Wikipedia:

Since 2003, the Joyce Foundation has paid grants totaling over $12 million to gun control organizations. The largest single grantee has been the Violence Policy Center, which received $4,154,970 between 1996 and 2006, and calls for an outright ban on handguns, semi-automatic and other firearms, and substantial restrictions on gun owners. The Joyce Foundation's position on gun control has led to frequent opposition and criticism from gun rights groups, particularly the National Rifle Association, which calls the Joyce Foundation an activist foundation whose "shadowy web of huge donations" leads "straight to puppet strings that control the agenda of gun ban groups".

But the Executive Director of the University of Chicago "Crime Lab" is only one of the hats Ander wears. She was appointed to the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission by Governor Pat Quinn and just two months after this email exchange she was named to Rahm Emanuel's Chicago mayor transition team's Committee on Public Safety, along with Father Michael *Snuffy" Pfleger, dubbed Snuffy by David Codrea for having infamously called for a Chicago gun store owner to be "snuffed out." Hey, Jake, as David routinely asks, "Whaddaya expect, it's Chi-town."

So Ander is a long-time, highly placed anti-gun zealot, a critical cog in the efforts of the citizen disarmament lobby. Yet ATF senior manager Hayes has apparently more than a passing acquaintance with Ms. Ander. And she, it seems, expects to be queried out of the blue by Hayes. Her reply:

From: Ander, Roseanna

Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 03:25 PM (Eastern)

To: Benjamin.R.Hayes (REDACTED)

Subject: Re: Gun Running Operation Uncovered in Arizona

Are the names in the indictment public? I want to pull up the actual indictments and can't with first and last names.

Roseanna Ander, Executive Director

University of Chicago Crime Lab

55 East Monroe, 30th Floor

Chicago, IL 60603

(LARGE BLOCK REDACTED)

Liar, liar, pants on fire. Gunwalker Bill raises his right hand to God and lies his ass off at a recent House hearing.

Two minutes later, in a move that bespeaks remarkable inside knowledge of and familiarity with the ATF chain of command, an impatient Ander goes straight to the horse's mouth -- William "Gunwalker Bill" Newell, then ATF SAC of the Phoenix office, responsible for Fast and Furious.

From: Ander, Roseanna (REDACTED)

Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 2:27 PM (Central)

To: Newell, William D.

Subject: Fw: Gun Running Operation Uncovered in Arizona

Do you have this info?

Roseanna Ander, Executive Director

University of Chicago Crime Lab

55 East Monroe, 30th Floor

Chicago, IL 60603

(LARGE BLOCK REDACTED)

Gunwalker Bill responds, and seems to know Ms. Ander quite well also:

From: Newell, William D. (REDACTED)

Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 03:30 PM

To: Ander, Roseanna

Cc: Hayes, Benjamin R. (REDACTED)

Subject: Re: Gun Running Operation Uncovered in Arizona

They were all just posted on the site below. There are several indictments, the main one being the "Avila" one.

http://www.justice.gov/usao/az/index.html

Bill Newell

Special Agent in Charge

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)

Phoenix Field Division (Arizona and New Mexico) (REDACTED)

(LARGE BLOCK REDACTED)

Ms. Anders seems appreciative as well as very knowledgeable about the arc of Gunwalker Bill's career, for she seems to know about his then expected reward of the promotion to to ATF Attache in Mexico City, a job which Newell had long coveted, and which was vacated by the forcing out of Darren Gil, who had objected to being kept out of the loop of Fast and Furious (after the scandal blew up a few days later with Senator Grassley's first letter on the subject, Newell's promotion was first put on hold, and then withdrawn).

From: Ander, Roseanna

To: Newell, William D.

Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 4:38:40 PM

Subject: Re: Gun Running Operation Uncovered in Arizona

Thank you. I guess you are leaving town on a high note!

Roseanna Ander, Executive Director

University of Chicago Crime Lab

55 East Monroe, 30th Floor

Chicago, IL 60603

(LARGE BLOCK REDACTED)

That celebratory high-five prediction would turn out to be premature.

The central point of this email exchange is this. The ATF has always denied that it plays one side of the policy debate or the other, claiming that it is only "enforcing the laws passed by Congress" without bias or favor. Here we see, in the easy familiarity between two high-ranking ATF senior managers and one of the most energetic anti-firearm zealots in the United States, the real truth -- that any pretense of impartiality is just that, a lie. The ATF senior management has a symbiotic relationship with the citizen disarmament lobby and evidently has had for many years. They are, in fact, joined at the hip. More scandalous grist for the upcoming ATF oversight hearing mill, no doubt.