BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today condemned a reported plan by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to destroy firearms associated with Operation Fast & Furious, the deadly Obama-Biden administration’s “gun walking’ scheme that turned into a national scandal.
Published reports say the ATF “is set to destroy” Fast & Furious guns, but Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) blasts the idea, asserting “Although the ATF apparently intends to forget its dangerous misconduct in Operation Fast and Furious, the scandal is still a matter of public concern. Given the potential for ongoing criminal and possible civil actions, it is not in the interest of justice for the ATF to destroy potential evidence associated with Operation Fast and Furious.”
CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb concurs with Jordan’s assessment, and took it another step.
“Operation Fast & Furious was only one of several scandals that erupted during the Obama-Biden administration,” Gottlieb observed, “but it’s the one that cost the life of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, and untold numbers of lives in Mexico, along with crimes committed in the United States. It’s hardly surprising the ATF wants to erase the public memory of this debacle, especially now that Joe Biden is in the White House.”
By some estimates, Fast & Furious allowed some 2,000 to 2,500 guns to be “walked” across the border after being sold in large quantities during suspected straw purchases, and ultimately straight into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. According to one report, a Justice Department audit found that “thousands of firearms, firearm parts, and ammunition had been stolen” from an ATF storage site in West Virginia, and that weapons related to Fast & Furious had been improperly stored on top of a gun vault. Former Obama-Biden administration Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over subpoenaed documents related to the operation.
“Fast & Furious was once described to Congress as ‘the perfect storm of idiocy’,” Gottlieb recalled. “We can’t allow this deadly scandal to be covered up by the dust of history, and preserving the firearms for ongoing investigations is one way to keep that from happening.”
With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the nation’s premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.
