State of Arizona investigating feds over "Fast and Furious" gun-running fiasco; Chief in U.S. Attorney's office takes the Fifth

by Chad D. Baus

The Washington Times is reporting that Arizona's state legislature will open its own investigation into the Obama administration's disgraced gun-running program, known as "Fast and Furious."

From the article:

[Arizona State House] Speaker Andy Tobin created the committee, and charged it with looking at whether the program broke any state laws — raising the possibility of state penalties against those responsible for the operation.

It's a turnaround from the rest of the immigration issue, where the federal government has sued to block the state's own set of laws.

A law requiring businesses to check new workers' legal status was upheld by the Supreme Court last year, and the court has agreed to hear the case of Arizona's crackdown law that makes being an illegal immigrant a state crime and gives state and local police the power to enforce that law.

Fast and Furious was a straw-purchase program run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The goal was to try to trace guns sold in Arizona shops and then trafficked across the Mexican border, where they landed in the hands of drug cartels.

As part of the operation, however, agents let the guns "walk" — meaning they lost track of them. At least two of the guns ended up at the scene where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in a shootout with Mexican bandits along a smuggling corridor in Arizona.

In fact, in some cases the ATF didn't "lose track" - they simply didn't even try to track the guns, or to prevent them from crossing the border.

According to Speaker Tobin, the committee is charged with looking into the facts about the program, what impact it had on Arizona and whether any of the state's laws were broken.

Republicans in Congress are also investigating Operation Gunrunner. According to the article, the chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona has told a House committee he will decline to answer their questions, citing his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Vice Chairman.