Why Did the Feds Sell Guns to Drug Gangs?

Despite Obama administration stonewalling, the "Fast and Furious" gunrunning scandal, which resulted in the killing of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and others, seems to be finally getting some traction in the mainstream news media.

Forbes.com observes the following:

Why a gunrunning scandal codenamed “Fast and Furious,” a program run secretly by the U.S. government that sent thousands of firearms over an international border and directly into the hands of criminals, hasn’t been pursued by an army of reporters all trying to be the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein is a story in itself.

Credit CNN's Anderson Cooper with doing a good piece last night (see video below) about how the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) sold guns to Mexican narco-terrorists. The version posted to the network's website leaves out, however, the interchange where the reporter alluded to a theory that gun control zealots in the Justice Department might have been responsible for this ill-conceived operation. Ordinarily this would be just another off-the-wall conspiracy theory, but given the radical ideologues installed in many federal agencies by this administration, is that really so farfetched?



Similarly, the New York Post editorializes that one possible explanation is...

that the anti-gun Obama administration deliberately wanted American guns planted in Mexico in order to demonize American firearms dealers and gun owners. The operation was manufacturing “evidence” for the president’s false claim that we’re to blame for the appalling levels of Mexican drug-war violence.

If this is true, then [Attorney General] Holder & Co. have got to go -- and the trail needs to be followed no matter where it leads. For the federal government to seek to frame its own citizens is unconscionable.

An alternative theory is that the administration was trying to arm one cartel to play it off another.

A Congressional investigation is ongoing. Fast and Furious came up at a Tuscon Town Hall conducted by U.S Rep. Paul Gosar this week:

The LA Times has more.