ATF Death Watch 37: Collateral Damage

[HTML1]

With the Obama Administration using Executive Orders to implement policies that are clearly outside Federal Law in order to draw attention away from the ATF Follies (Projects Gunwalker/Gunrunner/Fast n’ Furious/et al),  you’d think the Boys inside the Beltway would pounce on something – anything – that would make the ATF look credible, and give some credence to the idea of a “River o’ Guns” flowing into Mexico. And you’d be wrong. Witness the way the ObamaNation has completely overlooked this little gem coming out of a “scandal-plagued New Mexico border town” who just fired their entire police department due to a gun smuggling scandal.

Hate to say “we told you so,” (actually, we don’t. It’s kinda fun) but since RF is on the road with his own tribe for some much needed/deserved vay-cay time, I’ll do the honors. Remember how Robert has constantly maintained that the guns “flowing” into Mexico from North of the border were coming not from gun dealers, but from crooked law enforcement officials? No? Surely you got the memo. It’s not like RF hasn’t mentioned this 20 or 30 times before. (Yes. Okay. But stop calling me Shirley.) Check out this little story courtesy of Yahoo! News:

The scandal-plagued, tiny New Mexico border town of Columbus is dissolving its police department and asking the county sheriff to protect its citizens.

An employee at Columbus City Hall confirmed to The Lookout that the police force has been dissolved. The Luna County Sheriff’s Office will now take over patrolling the town.

The town has been upended since federal authorities arrested Police Chief Angelo Vega, Mayor Eddie Espinoza, Village Trustee Blas Gutierrez and nine other residents for conspiring to smuggle hundreds of guns to drug cartels over the border in March. All of the accused have pleaded not guilty, and their trial is expected in October,according to the Las Cruces Sun News. (You can read the indictment here.)

God, how I love the irony. (It’s like goldy or silvery, just not as precious.) Here’s an entire police department that got its ownself canned, because the whole enchilada’s gone bad to the bone. Nice. But, as the saying goes, it gets better. Or worse, depending on your point of view.

In another strange twist, the Las Cruces paper reported that the New Mexico U.S. Attorney’s Office has been relieved of its duties in prosecuting the trial late last month. Now, federal attorneys in El Paso, Texas will take over the case. Neither office would tell the paper what was behind the switch, and The Lookout has not yet received a reply to its a request for comment from us to the New Mexico U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Perhaps there’s a method to the madness at the world HQ of law enforcement overreach, also known as the BATF&E (and sometimes really big fires). I’m thinking this stinks on ice, and the Obama people are worried this little story might make things worse, rather than better. If the U.S. Attorney’s office is implicated in the scandal, that shares the joy from a localized, festering wound at the ATF, and gives credence to the spread of this cancer to the AG’s office. For those of you keeping score, we know this was approved as a “joint task force” thingy, with the ATF in the lead, taking the FBI, ICE, US Border Patrol and the AG’s office along for the ride. Just who do you think’s gonna be left over at Justice with hands clean enough to clean up this mess?

I, for one, will be very interested to see the proverbial lid blown off this story, as I suspect we’ll discover just how many guns, what kinds of guns, and how frequently guns are being trafficked by the people that are supposed to be STOPPING the bloody guns from getting across the border. Which will, obviously, completely blow the ATF’s and the ObamaNation’s narrative right out of the water. Nothing like a cold, hard dose of reality to sink a meme faster than you can say “paradigm shift.”

So, to recap: There is no “river of guns” flowing from U.S. gun dealers into Mexico. There is, however a brisk illegal arms business going on between U.S. Law Enforcement and the Mexican drug lords. It’s anybody’s guess if it’s more than a trickle and more like a raging river. But I’m betting that we’ll soon find out that a vast majority of guns coming out of the U.S. and heading down Me-hi-co way came, not from gun dealers, but from those guys with the badges and “to serve and protect” stenciled on their squad cars. And that’s just wrong.