Easy Way To Comment On ATF’s Power Grab

Thanks to reader P.T. we have our own form-letter generator to submit comments to the Office of Management and Budget on the ATF’s proposed multiple rifle sale reporting requirement for the Southwest border states. There is a pre-written letter in the generator which you can modify as you wish.

Please forward this to all your friends, family, and others you know who believe in preserving our gun rights and freedoms. This really is an “Army of Davids” approach to use the Instapundit’s term. Unlike the Brady Campaign and Mayor Bloomberg’s Illegal Mayors, this is a totally grassroots effort done in less than 24 hours. We didn’t need a grant from the Joyce Foundation to put this together!

UPDATE: I have taken down the letter generator as the comment period has now closed. I will check with P.T. to find out the final numbers of submissions.

I want to thank everyone who helped with this little project. First, to P.T. for setting up the account and writing the code. Without this, it couldn’t have been done. Second, to all the bloggers, forums, and organizations that posted a link or put the code up on their own site. Finally, and most importantly, to everyone who submitted comments. Taking the time to submit a comment is what citizen democracy is all about. This was a true grassroots effort for gun rights.

UPDATE II: The final numbers are in. P.T. reports that we had 3,203 submissions to the Office of Management and Budget. We will have to wait until the ATF releases the public comments to see how this number impacts the final count. That said, it had to help counteract the Brady Campaign’s letter generator.

Overshadowed By Events

The Chicago Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives issued a press release on Thursday which detailed what they termed as their “mid-year significant adjudications”.

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Chicago Field Division Special Agent in Charge Andrew Traver released a list of the top investigations undertaken during the first half of fiscal year 2011. The Chicago Field Division encompasses the entire State of Illinois.

“Chicago ATF has been very successful in obtaining significant judicial outcomes so far this year for a range of criminal defendants that represent the results of using the full spectrum of ATF’s arsenal of investigative techniques from the basic felon in possession of a firearm case to the very sophisticated RICO conspiracy gang prosecution,” said Traver. “Of course, the majority of these outstanding criminal prosecutions were only made possible through the dedicated cooperative efforts of our federal, state and local law enforcement partners, and we’re only getting started.”

Another way of looking at this release is that it is Andrew Traver’s way of saying “I’m still here guys!” given how he and his nomination to be head of ATF have been overshadowed by the unfolding revelations of Project Gunwalker. As to the events described in the release being significant, let’s just say that a full third of the “significant adjudications” involved a felon in possession of a firearm.

How Lame Can You Get

The ATF’s proposal to expand reporting of multiple firearm sales to include semi-automatic rifles in calibers greater than .22, while limited to the Southwest border states, is and was a major gun control measure. As such, you would expect gun control groups to submit long proposals in support of the measure. The Brady Campaign even announced their submission with a press release.

Ladd Everitt is the Director of Communications for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. He has held this position for five years so it can be assumed that he understands how the game is played.  When ATF is proposing a new gun control regulation, it can be presumed that all gun control groups will submit comments supporting it.

So much for assumptions and presumptions. The picture below is a screen shot from the ATF’s “Comments Regarding Information Collection, Reports of Multiple Sales of Certain Rifles, Published December 17, 2010”. It represents the comments submitted by Mr. Everitt.

That’s right, Mr. Everitt just put his name and address into the form letter generator sponsored by Mayor Bloomberg and his Illegal Mayors. He didn’t bother to even write a comment for CSGV even though so-called assault weapons are one of the items they oppose. How lame is that?

You will notice that I have blacked out Mr. Everitt’s address and email. Unlike Mr. Everitt, I don’t get off on publishing personal data of those with whom I disagree.

I have wondered how a Director of Communications for an organization in D.C. has the time to engage in flame wars on Twitter, character assassination on Facebook, and other childish games involving those opposed to his gun prohibitionist ideals. Now I know.

Report On ATF Shotgun Study

Link at the Peace, Love, Ammunition blog has examined the 516 page document that purports to have ALL the comments received on their “Shotgun Study”. While there are numerous problems with this document – including the publication of personal address information – the worst is what seems to be the deliberate omission of comments.

As Link notes about the comments he submitted:

I downloaded the poorly planned 516 page PDF and immediately searched for a distinct portion of my email address.  It was not found.  I know I submitted an email to the BATF on this matter, and I also knew that I had received an acknowledgment from the ATF confirming receipt of my email.

I searched and found their receipt email which I was initially going to post, but as I dug deeper into the rabbit hole it became less relevant.  Their receipt email was sent to me on 13 May 2011, which struck me as bizarre, since I knew I sent my response to their request for comment prior to attending the NRA Annual Meeting at the end of April 2011.  I searched my sent items and found that I had sent them my thoughts on their “study” on 8 April 2011.

Read the whole report which includes a link to the ATF released comments. The link to the study is below.

Peace, Love, And Ammunition: BATFE Shoutgun “Study”: I Smelled A Rat

UPDATE: According to the ATF label on this file at their website, these are only the responses received up through March 6th.

ATF Whistleblower Jay Dobyns On Fox Business News

ATF Agent Jay Dobyns infilitrated the Hell’s Angels. After he came out of deep cover to testify at trial, his wife was threatened with gang rape, threats of torture were made against his kids, and his house burned down due to arson while his family was originally still in it. Fortunately, his family escaped without harm.

And what did ATF managers in the Phoenix Field Office do in response? Nothing. They left Dobyns and his family hanging out to dry. From Once Proud on the CleanUpATF Forum, “What’s sad is the Hells Angels take better care of their own than ATF takes care of it’s agents!”

Interestingly enough, these are the same managers who ran Operation Fast and Furious. In the interview below, Dobyns says that ATF has become a rogue agency run by corrupt managers.

Electronic Tracking Revisited

Earlier in the month I speculated about the ATF, Project Gunrunner, and GPS tracking chips. My thoughts on the subject were spurred by comments made by Michael Bane in his Down Range Radio podcast.

Today, while looking for reaction to the threat of a Contempt of Congress cititation made by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), I came across an article in The Daily Caller which gave a bare-bones outline of Project Gunrunner. The article by Michael Boyle was entitled What we know about Project Gunrunner. Contained in the article was this about its origins:

The project began during the Bush administration in Laredo, Texas, in 2005 as a trial, morphing into a national program in 2006. The guns were sold and tracked electronically, giving law enforcement agents valuable intelligence on where the weapons went and who had them.

During the Bush years, no guns were allowed to cross the border into Mexico. When President Obama took office in 2009, things changed. Obama’s ATF continued Project Gunrunner, but made a crucial decision to allow guns to be “walked” into Mexico, eventually ending up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

If this article is indeed correct about firearms being electronically tagged and tracked as far back as 2005 during the Bush Administration, then a number of questions immediately come to mind.

First, if the guns sold out of Laredo in 2005 were electronically tagged and tracked, did ATF continue this method of electronically tagging and tracking the firearms sold later in Project Gunrunner?

Second, if they stopped the electronic tracking, this leads to the question why? Was it too expensive, too unreliable, or what? Did someone in the Obama Administration make the decision to discontinue the electronic tagging and tracking? Again, why?

Third, if the ATF did continue electronically tagging and tracking the straw purchases of firearms, then how did they lose track of these guns and let them cross the border into Mexico? It didn’t happen during the Bush Administration (according the Daily Caller) so who made the conscious decision to allow tagged guns to cross the border.

Finally, if the guns were still tagged electronically, who was responsible for tracking them once they crossed the border into Mexico?

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions nor do I have some inside source feeding me leaks. I’m just going on what was said was done during the Bush Administration by The Daily Caller and from what I’ve seen and read happened in the period since. It raises questions that should be answered in any investigation of Project Gunrunner or Operation Fast and Furious.

Issa Threatens ATF Acting Director With Contempt Citation

Rep. Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is not a happy man. He is not happy because the Department of Justice and the Acting Director of ATF, Kenneth Melson, are continuing to blow off the requests for documents related to Operation Fast and Furious (aka Project Gunwalker). This is in the face of a supoena requesting documents issued by the Committee.

Rep. Issa is so unhappy that he is threatening to have Melson cited for Contempt of Congress according to a letter released this morning. I have embedded the letter below. In the letter, Issa states that absent a claim of executive privilege ATF and DOJ have no authority to withhold the documents requested by Issa’s committee. Moreover, internal DOJ policies do not suffice as a reason to withhold documents and impede Congress in its constitutional authority.

A year ago this could not have happened. The Republicans did not have a majority in the House of Representatives and there is no way that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) would have threatened to jack up the head of ATF. Elections most certainly do have consequences.
4-20-11 Melson Follow Up Letter

H/T David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh

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ATF Shakes Up Leadership Of Phoenix Office

Allen Lengel at Tickle the Wire is reporting that Thomas Brandon, the head of the Detroit ATF, office will temporarily fill in as head of the Phoenix Field Division.

Brandon will fill in for the Phoenix special agent in charge, William D. Newell, who has been sent to Washington to help prepare and answer questions about Operation Fast and Furious for Congress and the Office of Inspector General, the sources said.

Newell joins Jim Needles, an assistant special agent in charge of the Phoenix Division, who has been temporarily assigned to Washington to also help prepare answers for the various inquiries, sources said. Another assistant special agent in charge of the Phoenix office has taken a sick leave. It is unclear where all the agents involved in the moves will wind up, and whether they’ll return to their old posts.

“Another assistant special agent” would be George Gillett who has requested whistleblower status from Senator Chuck Grassley’s office.It was only yesterday that a leaked memo on CleanUpATF reported the Gillett was acting head of the Phoenix office from Monday through Friday. Things must change fast in Arizona!

To: Phoe-CE Supervisors; Phoe-940Staff; Phoe-IO Supervisors
Sent: Mon Apr 11 13:13:42 2011
Subject: Designation
In accordance with ATF O 1100.168, ASAC George Gillett is designated as the acting SAC for the period of 4/11/11 – 4/15/11. He can be reached at (602) 776-XXXX, or on his cell phone (602) 653-XXXX.

Mike Vanderboegh at Sipsey Street Irregulars takes up the story on the field reaction to Newell and Needles being temporarily reassigned to Washington and on Gillett going on “sick leave”.  Follow the link to his page to read more.

As many have noticed, little has been heard or seen of Andrew Traver throughout this whole scandal. David Codrea’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request did uncover a couple of emails which pointed to Traver. Those give an indication that he may not be so out of the loop on the Headquarters’ reaction as he and the Obama Administration would have us believe.

Along those lines, Michael Bane warns that we need to be watchful that Traver isn’t being repositioned as the clean white knight sent in to clean up the Operation Gunwalker mess.

One thing to watch for is the White House using the current ATF scandal to create the next ATF scandal by shoving Chicago thug Andrew Traver down Congress’ throat as the new head of ATF. Traver’s career is rife with conflict of interests — working with International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Joyce Foundation promoting antigun causes — and overtly lying to the media on the difference between a “semiauto” and a “machinegun.”

His most recent weekly podcast, Downrange Radio, also discussed Operation Fast and Furious as well as Traver.