Transaction Search Form: please type in any of the fields below.
Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 1:06 am
Time: 1:06 am
Results for guns (u.s.)
7 results foundAuthor: Issa, Darrell E. Title: The Department of Justice’s Operation Fast and Furious: Accounts of ATF Agents Summary: In the fall of 2009, the Department of Justice (DOJ) developed a risky new strategy to combat gun trafficking along the Southwest Border. The new strategy directed federal law enforcement to shift its focus away from seizing firearms from criminals as soon as possible — and to focus instead on identifying members of trafficking networks. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) implemented that strategy using a reckless investigative technique that street agents call “gunwalking.” ATF’s Phoenix Field Division began allowing suspects to walk away with illegally purchased guns. The purpose was to wait and watch, in the hope that law enforcement could identify other members of a trafficking network and build a large, complex conspiracy case. This shift in strategy was known and authorized at the highest levels of the Justice Department. Through both the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona and “Main Justice,” headquarters in Washington, D.C., the Department closely monitored and supervised the activities of the ATF. The Phoenix Field Division established a Gun Trafficking group, called Group VII, to focus on firearms trafficking. Group VII initially began using the new gunwalking tactics in one of its investigations to further the Department’s strategy. The case was soon renamed “Operation Fast and Furious,” and expanded dramatically. It received approval for Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) funding on January 26, 2010. ATF led a strike force comprised of agents from ATF, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The operation’s goal was to establish a nexus between straw purchasers of assault-style weapons in the United States and Mexican drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) operating on both sides of the United States-Mexico border. Straw purchasers are individuals who are legally entitled to purchase firearms for themselves, but who unlawfully purchase weapons with the intent to transfer them into the hands of DTOs or other criminals. Operation Fast and Furious was a response to increasing violence fostered by the DTOs in Mexico and their increasing need to purchase ever-growing numbers of more powerful weapons in the U.S. An integral component of Fast and Furious was to work with gun shop merchants, or “Federal Firearms Licensees” (FFLs) to track known straw purchasers through the unique serial number of each firearm sold. ATF agents entered the serial numbers of the weapons purchased into the agency’s Suspect Gun Database. These weapons bought by the straw purchasers included AK-47 variants, Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles, .38 caliber revolvers, and the FN Five-seveN. During Fast and Furious, ATF frequently monitored actual transactions between the FFLs and straw purchasers. After the purchases, ATF sometimes conducted surveillance of these weapons with assistance from local police departments. Such surveillance included following the vehicles of the straw purchasers. Frequently, the straw purchasers transferred the weapons they bought to stash houses. In other instances, they transferred the weapons to third parties. The volume, frequency, and circumstances of these transactions clearly established reasonable suspicion to stop and question the buyers. Agents are trained to use such interactions to develop probable cause to arrest the suspect or otherwise interdict the weapons and deter future illegal purchases. Operation Fast and Furious sought instead to allow the flow of guns from straw purchasers to the third parties. Instead of trying to interdict the weapons, ATF purposely avoided contact with known straw purchasers or curtailed surveillance, allowing guns to fall into the hands of criminals and bandits on both sides of the border. Though many line agents objected vociferously, ATF and DOJ leadership continued to prevent them from making every effort to interdict illegally purchased firearms. Instead, leadership’s focus was on trying to identify additional conspirators, as directed by the Department’s strategy for combating Mexican Drug Cartels. ATF and DOJ leadership were interested in seeing where these guns would ultimately end up. They hoped to establish a connection between the local straw buyers in Arizona and the Mexico-based DTOs. By entering serial numbers from suspicious transactions into the Suspect Gun Database, ATF would be quickly notified as each one was later recovered at crime scenes and traced, either in the United States or in Mexico. The Department’s leadership allowed the ATF to implement this flawed strategy, fully aware of what was taking place on the ground. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona encouraged and supported every single facet of Fast and Furious. Main Justice was involved in providing support and approving various aspects of the Operation, including wiretap applications that would necessarily include painstakingly detailed descriptions of what ATF knew about the straw buyers it was monitoring. This hapless plan allowed the guns in question to disappear out of the agency’s view. As a result, this chain of events inevitably placed the guns in the hands of violent criminals. ATF would only see these guns again after they turned up at a crime scene. Tragically, many of these recoveries involved loss of life. While leadership at ATF and DOJ no doubt regard these deaths as tragic, the deaths were a clearly foreseeable result of the strategy. Both line agents and gun dealers who cooperated with the ATF repeatedly expressed concerns about that risk, but ATF supervisors did not heed those warnings. Instead, they told agents to follow orders because this was sanctioned from above. They told gun dealers not to worry because they would make sure the guns didn’t fall into the wrong hands. Unfortunately, ATF never achieved the laudable goal of dismantling a drug cartel. In fact, ATF never even got close. After months and months of investigative work, Fast and Furious resulted only in indictments of 20 straw purchasers. Those indictments came only after the death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. The indictments, filed January 19, 2011, focus mainly on what is known as “lying and buying.” Lying and buying involves a straw purchaser falsely filling out ATF Form 4473, which is to be completed truthfully in order to legally acquire a firearm. Even worse, ATF knew most of the indicted straw purchasers to be straw purchasers before Fast and Furious even began. In response to criticism, ATF and DOJ leadership denied allegations that gunwalking occurred in Fast and Furious by adopting an overly narrow definition of the term. They argue that gunwalking is limited to cases in which ATF itself supplied the guns directly. As field agents understood the term, however, gunwalking includes situations in which ATF had contemporaneous knowledge of illegal gun purchases and purposely decided not to attempt any interdiction. The agents also described situations in which ATF facilitated or approved transactions to known straw buyers. Both situations are even more disturbing in light of the ATF’s certain knowledge that weapons previously purchased by the same straw buyers had been trafficked into Mexico and may have reached the DTOs. When the full parameters of this program became clear to the agents assigned to Group VII, a rift formed among Group VII’s agents in Phoenix. Several agents blew the whistle on this reckless operation only to face punishment and retaliation from ATF leadership. Sadly, only the tragic murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry provided the necessary impetus for DOJ and ATF leadership to finally indict the straw buyers whose regular purchases they had monitored for 14 months. Even then, it was not until after whistleblowers later reported the issue to Congress that the Justice Department finally issued a policy directive that prohibited gunwalking. This report is the first in a series regarding Operation Fast and Furious. Possible future reports and hearings will likely focus on the actions of the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona, the decisions faced by gun shop owners (FFLs) as a result of ATF’s actions, and the remarkably ill-fated decisions made by Justice Department officials in Washington, especially within the Criminal Division and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. This first installment focuses on ATF’s misguided approach of letting guns walk. The report describes the agents’ outrage about the use of gunwalking as an investigative technique and the continued denials and stonewalling by DOJ and ATF leadership. It provides some answers as to what went wrong with Operation Fast and Furious. Further questions for key ATF and DOJ decision makers remain unanswered. For example, what leadership failures within the Department of Justice allowed this program to thrive? Who will be held accountable and when? Details: Washington, DC: United States Congress, 2011. 51p. Source: Internet Resource: Joint Staff Report: Accessed July 20, 2011 at: http://grassley.senate.gov/judiciary/upload/ATF-06-14-11-Joint-Issa-Grassley-report-on-agent-findings.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://grassley.senate.gov/judiciary/upload/ATF-06-14-11-Joint-Issa-Grassley-report-on-agent-findings.pdf Shelf Number: 122129 Keywords: Border SecurityDrug CartelsGun ControlGun ViolenceGuns (U.S.)Illegal GunsOrganized CrimeTrafficking in Weaspons |
Author: Knight, Brian G. Title: State Gun Policy and Cross-State Externalities: Evidence from Crime Gun Tracing Summary: This paper provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of cross-state externalities associated with gun regulations in the context of the gun trafficking market. Using gun tracing data, which identify the source state for crime guns recovered in destination states, we find that firearms in this market tend to flow from states with weak gun laws to states with strict gun laws, satisfying a necessary condition for the existence of cross-state externalities in the theoretical model. We also find an important role for transportation costs in this market, with gun flows more significant between nearby states; this finding suggests that externalities are spatial in nature. Finally, we present evidence that criminal possession of guns is higher in states exposed to weak gun laws in nearby states. Details: Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2011. 48p. Source: Internet Resource: NBER Working Paper Series; Working Paper 17469: Accessed October 3, 2011 at: http://www.nber.org/papers/w17469 Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w17469 Shelf Number: 122964 Keywords: Gun ControlGun TraffickingGuns (U.S.)Trafficking in Weapons |
Author: Issa, Darrell Title: Memorandum: Update of Operation Fast and Furious Summary: Since February 2011, the House Oversight and Government and Government Reform Committee has been conducting a joint investigation with Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA) of reckless conduct in the Justice Department’s Operation Fast and Furious. The committee has held three hearings, conducted twenty-four transcribed interviews with fact witnesses, sent the Department of Justice over fifty letters, and issued the Department of Justice two subpoenas for documents. The Justice Department, however, continues to withhold documents critical to understanding decision making and responsibility in Operation Fast and Furious. This memo explains key events and facts in Operation Fast and Furious that have been uncovered during the congressional investigation; remaining questions that the Justice Department refused to cooperate in helping the Committee answer; the ongoing relevance of these questions; and the extent of the harm created by both Operation Fast and Furious and the Department’s refusal to fully cooperate. The memo also explains issues for Committee Members to consider in making a decision about holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for his Department’s refusal to provide subpoenaed documents. Attached to this memo for review and discussion is a draft version of a contempt report that the Committee may consider at an upcoming business meeting. Details: Washington, DC: United States Congress, 2012. 64p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 21, 2012 at http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Update-on-Fast-and-Furious-with-attachment-FINAL.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Update-on-Fast-and-Furious-with-attachment-FINAL.pdf Shelf Number: 126084 Keywords: Border SecurityDrug CartelsGun ControlGun ViolenceGuns (U.S.)Illegal GunsOrganized CrimeTrafficking in Weaspons |
Author: Brauer, Jurgen Title: The US Firearms Industry: Production and Supply Summary: This report analyses economic aspects of the US firearms industry, specifically the civilian, private security, and law enforcement (i.e. non-military) markets for pistols, revolvers, rifles, and shotguns, providing a focus on supply-side issues. The US Firearms Industry's findings include: The number of firearms tracked for this analysis (domestically retained firearms, plus imports) totals nearly 150 million units. 2,288 US-based producers of civilian firearms have been identified; providing possibly the most extensive public record to date. These firms produced an average of around 4.24 million firearms per year, including those for export, during the period studied. Firearms imports into the United States have risen from around 500,000 units in the early 1980s to about 3.5 million units by 2010. The majority of producers are relatively small in scale, with only a small percentage of firms—between 1.3 and 7.5 per cent, depending on firearms category—producing more than 100,000 weapons per year. Three brands (Sturm, Ruger & Co., Remington, and Smith & Wesson) each produced ten million or more weapons over the entire 1986–2010 period, accounting for about 41 per cent of all domestically produced firearms for domestic use. The Working Paper also estimates firearms resales via licensed dealers and discusses recent merger and acquisitions activity in the industry. The analysis is based on a data record drawn from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; US Customs and Border Protection; and the US Census Bureau. Details: Geneva, SWIT: Small Arms Survey, 2013. 98p. Source: Internet Resource: Small arms Survey Working Paper 14: Accessed February 8, 2013 at: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/F-Working-papers/SAS-WP14-US-Firearms-Industry.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/F-Working-papers/SAS-WP14-US-Firearms-Industry.pdf Shelf Number: 127546 Keywords: Firearms IndustryGuns (U.S.)Weapons |
Author: Gerney, Arkadi Title: Lost and Stolen Guns from Gun Dealers Summary: Every year tens of thousands of guns are discovered to be missing from the inventories of federally licensed gun dealers. Guns that go missing from dealer inventories, whether they are stolen, illegally sold without proper documentation, or misplaced due to negligent recordkeeping, pose two main risks to public safety: 1. Guns stolen from dealers often end up in criminal hands. Following a two-year study of gun-trafficking investigations, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, reported that 14 percent of gun-trafficking investigations involved guns stolen from gun dealers. 2. Guns lost or stolen from dealers are more difficult to trace because there is no record of who initially purchased the gun from the dealer. When these guns are used in crimes, any investigative lead offered by finding the gun at the crime scene goes cold when it is discovered that the gun dealer has no record of who purchased it. Since 2004 Congress has imposed restrictions on ATF in its annual budget that make it especially difficult for the agency to police lost and stolen guns. One such restriction prevents ATF from requiring gun dealers to conduct an annual inventory, a process that would allow dealers to promptly identify and report missing guns. In the administration’s fiscal year 2014 budget request to Congress, however, President Barack Obama requested for the first time that Congress remove this harmful budget rider. This issue brief presents the aggregated data on guns that are lost and stolen from dealers each year, discusses example cases of how guns missing from particular dealers have put the public at risk, and explains how Congress has hindered law-enforcement efforts to prevent and investigate thefts from gun dealers. Details: Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2013. 10p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 3, 2013 at: http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/GerneyInventoryBrief-1.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/GerneyInventoryBrief-1.pdf Shelf Number: 129241 Keywords: Gun DealersGun-Related ViolenceGuns (U.S.)Stolen PropertyTrafficking in Weapons |
Author: del Frate, Anna Alvazzi Title: Non-lethal Firearm Violence Summary: When a gun is fired the result is not always fatal: many victims survive. This may sound like good news, but the consequences of firearm injuries can be extremely severe, and treatment and recovery place a heavy burden on survivors, their families, communities, and society. Non-lethal firearm violence is far more widespread than deaths from firearms worldwide. A better knowledge of the incidence and patterns of non-lethal firearm violence would clarify the overall burden of armed violence on society and underpin the development of effective responses. Yet current information about non-lethal firearm injuries is limited, and is hampered by a lack of data. This Research Note summarizes findings published in the Small Arms Survey 2012: Moving Targets,1 focusing especially on the impact of intentional injuries committed with a firearm (firearm assaults), but also considering the consequences of self-inflicted and unintentional firearm injuries. The first section explains how the type of firearm and ammunition, as well as the availability of medical care, influence the ‘survivability’ of firearm injuries; the second reviews existing data sources; the third section presents available data on the incidence of non-fatal injuries; while the last one examines direct and indirect costs of firearm injuries. Details: Geneva, SWIT: Small Arms Survey, 2013. 4p. Source: Internet Resource: Research Notes, No. 32: Accessed August 6, 2013 at: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/H-Research_Notes/SAS-Research-Note-32.pdf Year: 2013 Country: International URL: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/H-Research_Notes/SAS-Research-Note-32.pdf Shelf Number: 129549 Keywords: Gun ViolenceGuns (U.S.)Injuries |
Author: American Bar Association. National Task Force on Stand Your Ground Laws Title: A Review of the Preliminary Report & Recommendations Summary: In 2013, the National Task Force on Stand Your Ground Laws was convened by the American Bar Association entities identified below, to review and analyze the recently enacted Stand Your Ground laws in multiple states and their impact on public safety and the criminal justice system. The ABA sponsors of the Task Force include the Coalition on Racial & Ethnic Justice, the Center for Racial and Ethnic Diversity, the Commission of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession, Council for Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Educational Pipeline, the Section on Individual Rights & Responsibilities, the Criminal Justice Section, the Young Lawyer's Division, the Standing Committee on Gun Violence, and the Commission on Youth at Risk. The Task Force members are a diverse array of leaders from law enforcement, government, public and private criminal attorneys, public and private health, academic experts, and other legal and social science experts. Further, the Task Force's membership includes appointees from the above co-sponsoring ABA entities and strategic partners, including the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, the Urban Institute, the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children. Additionally, the Task Force has an Advisory Committee of leading academic and other legal and social science experts as well as victims' rights advocates. The Task Force has conducted a comprehensive legal and multidisciplinary analysis of the impact of the Stand Your Ground laws, which have substantially expanded the bounds of self-defense law in over half of the jurisdictions in the United States. The study detailed herein is national in its scope and assess the utility of previous, current, and future laws in the area of self-defense across the United States. In examining and reporting on the potential effects Stand Your Ground laws may have on public safety, individual liberties, and the criminal justice system, the Task Force has: 1. Examined the provisions of Stand Your Ground statutes and analyzed the potential for their misapplication and their risk of injustice from multiple perspectives, e.g. the individual's right to exercise self-defense, the victim's rights, and of the rights of the criminally accused. 2. Analyzed the degree to which racial or ethnic bias impacts Stand Your Ground laws. Particular attention was paid to the role implicit bias. First, the analysis focuses on how implicit bias may impact the perception of a deadly threat as well as the ultimate use of deadly force. Second, it looks at how implicit bias impacts the investigation, prosecution, immunity, and final determination of which homicides are justified. 3. Examined the effect that the surge of new Stand Your Ground laws had on crime control objectives and public safety. 4. Reviewed law enforcement policy, administrative guidelines, statutes, and judicial rulings regarding the investigation and prosecution of Stand Your Ground cases. 5. Conducted a series of regional public hearings to learn about community awareness, perceptions of equality in enforcement and application, opinions concerning the utility of the laws, and reactions to individualized experiences involving interactions with Stand Your Ground laws. 6. Prepared a final report and recommendations. Details: American Bar Association, 2014. 71p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 9, 2014 at: http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/racial_ethnic_justice/aba_natl_task_force_on_syg_laws_preliminary_report_program_book.authcheckdam.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/racial_ethnic_justice/aba_natl_task_force_on_syg_laws_preliminary_report_program_book.authcheckdam.pdf Shelf Number: 133195 Keywords: Crime ControlGun Control PolicyGun ViolenceGuns (U.S.)HomicidePublic SafetySelf-DefenseStand Your Ground Laws |