Drug War - Weapons Traffic: Gun Walking the Mexican Border

An editorial from the New York Times

NYTimes.com: "It turns out that Fast and Furious, the foolhardy government operation that allowed high-powered weapons to cross the border to Mexican drug cartels, was not a one-off. The Bush administration used the same improper tactic in Operation Wide Receiver in 2006-7.

The history of these risky “gun walking” operations — devised by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to try to track illicit gun-shop purchases in Arizona to the cartel bosses — was spelled out to Congress by Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division.

... Mr. Breuer said in the past five years, 94,000 weapons have been recovered in Mexico and 64,000 were traced to American sources. “We need more tools,” he said. To which Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, predictably responded, “The answer isn’t to clamp down on law abiding-citizens or gun dealers.” There is no problem with law-abiding citizens. It’s Congress’s failure to ban sales of assault weapons that is feeding the drug wars." read more