The Obama administration has an enemies list, and John Dodson was on it. The special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) infuriated his superiors by alerting Congress and everyone else about the government's gunrunning scheme called Fast and Furious.
The U.S. attorney in Arizona leaked an internal memo to undermine a veteran Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent who was highly critical of the botched "Fast and Furious" gunrunning operation, the Justice Department's office of inspector general said Monday in a report.
Congress has been looking to increase inspections on some types of private gun purchases, but federally licensed firearms dealers — whose sales already are subject to background checks — may need more scrutiny themselves, according to a Justice Department audit.
Polling suggests many voters viewed last week's Senate gun votes through the lens of Second Amendment rights — findings that show why gun control advocates fell short in their bid to expand background checks on firearms sales despite overwhelming public support.
The deadly bombs that struck the Boston Marathon on Monday were fashioned from large pressure cookers packed with nails and ball bearings and hidden in black bags on the ground, said FBI investigators and a U.S. official briefed on the investigation.
Arizona authorities say a package addressed to Sheriff Joe Arpaio would have exploded if opened, leading to serious injuries or death.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has yanked the licenses of the gun store that sold the weapons that were used in the Newtown shootings.
Gun rights groups have singled out President Obama for failing to prosecute gun crimes, but the drop in cases filed actually began a decade ago under the Bush administration.
Fifteen months before the Fast & Furious gun scandal was unmasked in public, Homeland Security agents along the Arizona border recognized that their colleagues at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were allowing illegal guns to flow across the border to Mexican drug gangs in violation of federal policy.
