“The federal government received a bipartisan bashing Wednesday for losing track of hundreds of guns and grenade launchers that were donated to police departments,” thehill.com reports. “The General Services Administration (GSA) has transferred more than 9,800 firearms to state and local police departments since 1999. But many of these weapons have later turned up for sale at gun stores or been stolen, according to a government watchdog.” How many? Not specified. Note: this is not the defense department program criticized for militarizing America’s police. This is . . .
the GSA’s Surplus Firearm Donation Program. The GSA’s SFDP transfers “unused” federal agency weapons to state and local police po-po, including grenade launchers and backpack nukes (JK).
The GSA requires agencies receiving the guns to report lost of missing items to the GSA’s web- based property transfer system (GSAXcess). According to a report submitted to Congress by the Honorable Carol Fortine Ochoa Inspector General, General Services Administration, here’s how well the GSAXcess system worked.
The OIG [Office of the Inspector General] found that GSA’s database records of firearms donations were incomplete and inaccurate, and that inventory controls were not sufficient to monitor firearms donated to state and local law enforcement agencies.
- Information in GSAXcess used to record the initial transfer was incomplete, often missing critical data such as the names and addresses of the state/local law enforcement agencies receiving the donated firearms.
- Other GSAXcess information was entered incompletely or placed in the wrong data fields, including the serial number, make, and model of the donated firearms.
- GSAXcess was not designed to record activity after the initial donation of the firearms, such as information about reports of missing or stolen weapons. The program officer for GSA [ED: singular, as in one, to keep track of 10k firearms.] kept paper records of the initial donations, and used spreadsheets to manually track subsequent activity. These records, however, could not be sorted or searched electronically, contained inaccuracies, and were disorganized.
- GSA has not provided states with uniform guidance for annual inventories procedures. Inventory controls were weak with quality varying from state to state.
- There has been a general lack of oversight from GSA. Issues of data reliability have affected inventory results and caused donated firearms to be overlooked in the inventory process, increasing risk of theft or unauthorized use.
Congress is outraged, I tell you! Outraged!
“This is not rocket science,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.). “I don’t understand how something so simple can’t be done,” he asked. “We can put a man on the moon and yet we can’t track firearms?”
An inspector’s general report issued in June 2015 found that 485 firearms have gone missing — only 24 have been recovered, while the rest remain on the lose.
During the first hearing on the matter, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle expressed concern.
Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) said it is “appalling” that the federal government would lose track of the firearms.
“This is my concern,” Carter said. “Here we have a federal agency that is only dedicated to registering and controlling firearms. Yet they don’t even know how many they have, they don’t know where they are, and they don’t know who has them.”
And the antis want the feds to implement “universal background checks” for Americans exercising their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. Feh.
So what you mean to tell me is that the federal government isn’t very efficient at tasks that are accomplished every day by normal citizens and private companies? Huh. We should put them in charge of universal background checks though, you know… because guns.
Let’s not jump into the deep end straight away. How about we start the feds off with something simple first, like taking over healthcare?
So if I “found” any of these lost guns could I get a reward? Or should I just keep them as my reward?
I will bet you dollars to doughnuts whatever reward you get will be less than the gun you find and considerably less than the time and effort it takes to get the gun back to them.
Certainly the rewards would be minimal, but what would be the cost of being found in possession of “lost or stolen” federal property, particularly when that property is a firearm?
The reward would likely be a 10+ year stretch for being found in possession of stolen Federal property. They need donkey to pin the tail on after all, as you know.
With the flak at stag where nothing leaked out someone needs to go to jail.
Ed:as said they can’t even control their own guns much less ours.
Obviously, only the active military and Law Enforcement are specially trained and responsible enough to own and keep firearms, oh wait…
Many years ago, Ilie Nastatse, a top tennis pro, had his credit card go missing. He didn’t report the loss for several months. When asked why, he said “I haven’t reported my missing credit card to the police because whoever stole it is spending less than my wife.”
Maybe whoever “found” these guns are causing less harm than the cops.
“I don’t understand how something so simple can’t be done …”
We are talking about government here, so the answer should be apparent.
Who watches the watchmen?
Perhaps they should not only be held to the same standard as us mere …. “Civilians” (hey popo, don’t forget you are mere civilians too) but receive maximum penalties as an example and a warning.
Top. Men. I’m sure the misplaced guns are in the crate right next to the Ark.
Between this and Obamacare’s website… if the gov’t ever decided to create a national gun registry at least we wouldn’t have to worry too much about it. Geez.
obama the stone cold traitor to America is marrying weapons with jihadis that he’s bringing in via the Southern border, “refugee” immigration, fiancee visas and other visa overstays.
obama the African dictator is the father of our second civil war.
While he whines incessantly to disarm American citizens.
So does anyone know where the boat sank?
Actually we haven’t been able to put a man on the moon in a long time.
At our current level of technology we could put men (and women) on the moon and on Mars. Plans are on the boards and volunteers stand in the wings. This isn’t a question of ability, it is a question of willingness. For too many years the government has been more willing to spend trillions of dollars for The War on Poverty and raided the NASA budget (among others) to do it.
We lost that technology and all of the experienced NASA staff have retired and/or died. We now rely on cold war era Russian rockets to get humans to space. Embarrassing.
Slow and Furious
“Gone missing” is this jolly old England.(as “to hospital. The gun walked off all on it’s own.
At the moment on gsaxcess:
12x Glock 22 in .40 and 10x Colt M16-2a listed DOE
50+ Baretta 92 listed Dept Vet Affairs – They must have thousands as listed dozens every month.
80+ S&W 9mm auto and HK33KE Goddard Space Flight Center (no jacking the Space Shuttle?)
2x Sig Sauer P225 – Naitonal Park Police
I have it on reliable authority that all these silly ass pretend popo are in the process of disarming. Believe that?
When I worked for the feds we said GSA stood for Graft and Steal Administration.
How many people went to jail or will go to prison for this? I bet it lies between 0 and 1, and closer to the former.
And they don’t trust “us” with firearms?
Those guns aren’t lost. They are in police armories serialized by rack number or they are M203 enabled rifles only tracked by the lower receiver number instead of lower receiver and M203 attachment serial #. No M203 enabled rifle (aka grenade launchers) would be useable without a lower and no police armories close without matching serial counts. Cops report lost guns.
The reality is that those guns are still there, but being reported on paperwork by rack numbers or different serial #s. This is looking for scandal where there is none.
And how exactly did a portion of these firearms end up in gun shops, Mr. Boot Licker?
Am I the only one who thinks that the worst part of this is that the government is giving cops grenade launchers. Before you go bashing me, I am pro-police, but grenade launchers have no place in the hands of anyone on US soil that could use them against citizens. Not the police, not the national guard, not the coast guard unless off shore used against foreign registered vessels.
The only thing worse than taking grenades from FLEAs and giving them to cops would be letting the FLEAs keep them.
In other words, who the Hell thought it was a good idea to have Feds launching (or hand throwing) grenades at citizens?
We can put a man on the moon but we can’t make law enforcement do something simply by requiring it of them. Why? Because they are above the rules.
And nobody is ever going to punish them for violating this or any other. Which just provides further proof that the rules don’t apply to them.
The answer is simple: You want government employees to follow the rules, you have to require them to follow the rules and punish violations. Congressional hand-wringing parties achieve none of that.
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