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Five individuals were arrested in Laredo, Hebbronville, and Falls City, Texas, last week for allegedly trafficking military grade firearms to a drug cartel in Mexico.According to court documents, Gerardo Rafael Perez Jr., also known as Jerry, 23, of Laredo, allegedly coordinated the acquisition of more than 100 firearms throughout Texas to be smuggled across the international border and delivered to a drug trafficking cartel in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Perez’s organization allegedly used straw purchasers, including co-defendants Francisco Alejandro Benavides, also known as Frankie, 23, and Mark Anthony Trevino Jr., 24, to procure the firearms from a variety of sources...

David Codrea published an article today about an interesting letter one law abiding silencer owner received from the ATF. The silencer owner in question owns an AWC .22lr silencer that uses a material made of tangled copper ropes to slow down the expanding gasses, a material not unlike the common Brillo pad or Chore Boy Pot Scrubber. He wanted to know whether it would be legal to replace the worn out material in his legally owned silencer with some pot scrubber material, an act which seems pretty innocuous to the impartial observer. The ATF, on the other hand… From the...

One was a failed law enforcement operation. The other was a possible criminal conspiracy. There seem to be two avenues of document extraction in the ongoing Gunwalker scandal, in addition to witness testimony. One is the subpoena process being used by House and Senate committees investigating the plot. The other is selective leaking to favored media sources, which appears to be a preferred tactic of the White House. The former is official process, the latter an attempt to short-circuit the process. Both approaches have been used in a pair of articles released via the Associated Press (via National Public Radio)...

Yes, I have been watching this closely but it feels like the fit is hitting the shan on this - finally. Obama and Holder are complicit in murder and are engaging in outright treason just within the matrix of Gunwalker alone. Here is a link to a great piece at Pajamas Media that sums it all up - and read the comment thread which is every bit as informative as the article itself. Click Here for article and comment thread. Bottom line: Gunwalker never, ever had ANYTHING to do with drug enforcement or stopping the cartels. NOTHING. The reason that...

In December of 2009, Russell Vanderwerf, Director of Industry Operations for the Houston office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was arrested in New Orleans after staffers at the Residence Inn .. he was staying were sent to investigate a malfunctioning hotel fire alarm. It seems Mr. Vanderwerf had disconnected the smoke detectors in his suite and removed the alarm horn, leaving it hanging out of the wall. But far more interesting to hotel employees, Vanderwerf had also removed the door between his bedroom and the outer suite and replaced it with a four by five foot piece...

Will .22 rimfires fall under new reporting controls? Will CA bullet button system be classified as detachable magazine? The following was provided to me by a source who has proven reliable over the years. It was given to him by an ATF insider with the specific request to be forwarded to me. I am reproducing it here unedited and in its entirety as I received it: It appears the new technical experts at ATF headquarters are making another technical determination in their new bid to classify firearms in a prohibitive way. We are all now aware that ATF will be...

More on ATF Multiple Sales Reporting December 29, 2010 By Larry Keane An editorial in today’s Washington Post discussed the recent decision by ATF to require federally licensed firearms retailers along the Southwest border to report multiple sales, or other dispositions, of most semi-automatic rifles. Specifically this would impact .22 caliber or larger semi-automatic rifles that are capable of accepting a detachable magazine and are purchased by the same individual within five consecutive business days. Though the Post supports this ill-advised proposal, it did acknowledge the legitimacy surrounding one of industry’s objections: “When reports of its plan surfaced, the administration...

Things had been looking up for gun-rights activists. In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in D.C. v. Heller that Washington’s handgun laws were unconstitutional. In the summer of 2010, in McDonald v Chicago, the court expanded that ruling to apply to handgun laws in all 50 states. Even President Obama seemed relatively open to Second Amendment rights, saying on the campaign trail: “I believe there is a Second Amendment right. I think it is an individual right. I think people have the right to lawfully bear arms.” Now, it seems that when it comes to Obama and guns, he was...

The Obama-run Washington bureaucracy has classified a common and reliable rifle, the M1 Garand, as a “threat to public safety in the U.S.,” and the State Department has canceled plans by the Republic of Korea to return tens of thousands of surplus rifles to the U.S. for sale in the consumer market. The stunning classification of an ordinary gun that was used in the U.S. military for two decades and issued to thousands of soldiers and Marines during World War II and Korea as a threat came in a document by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. It is...

DETROIT - An FBI agent who led the investigation of nine Michigan militia members charged with trying to launch war against the federal government couldn't recall many details of the two-year probe yesterday during questioning by defense lawyers. Even the judge who must decide whether to release the nine until trial was puzzled. "I share the frustrations of the defense team … that she doesn't know anything," U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts said after agent Leslie Larsen confessed she hadn't reviewed her notes recently and couldn't remember specific details of the case.

Airsoft toys are not machine guns. Even though the replicas often strive to be as realistic as possible, most people intuitively grasp that a toy gun made to fire plastic BBs measured in tenths of grams is not remotely a lethal threat. Read more: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/agents-of-incompetence-customs-atf-dodging-all-questions-about-toy-guns-part-iii/

There's no story at the site, only the video from the Newscast. However, here's a better YouTube version. This is about the shipment of TOY guns the ATF recently confiscated. Note that at 1:17, the "Special" Agent is performing a demonstration and tries to put the magazine in BACKWARDS. If he wanted to prove just how "special" he really is, he succeeded magnificently. He also succeeded in adding to the long line of ATF (i.e. FBI rejects) screwups that have made the agency a laughing stock it is today. The outrageous contention by the ATF that these TOYS can be...

Update: The door was likely between an inner bedroom and the suit. I guess he left the room door open to the hall to, um, attract visitors. You might be able to make this up. But it would require a pretty disturbed mind. Where to begin. Initially being investigated for disabling the fire alarm systems in his hotel room, due to shower steam, he claimed, it was discovered he had replaced the hotel room door with a piece of plywood. The plywood contained a circular padded hole believed to be used for sexual acts. See gloryhole. Yes, it was facing the...

An employee of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was arrested on charges of disabling the fire alarm system and damaging property in his Metairie hotel room, according to a Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office arrest report. Russell Vanderwerf, 44, of Houston was booked Dec. 1 with simple criminal damage valued at $500 to $5,000 and interfering with fire prevention after staffers at the Residence Inn, 3 Galleria Blvd., began investigating a malfunctioning fire alarm system, the arrest report said. A technician who was summoned Nov. 30 tracked the alarm problem to the second-floor room registered to Vanderwerf,...

Police serving order shot at, ATF says LINDA SATTER ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE A Pulaski County man fired several shots Tuesday at officers who attempted to serve a federal warrant at his mobile home at 3106 W. Justice Road in northern Pulaski County, a federal agent said. No one was injured, and the resident, Johnny Davis, surrendered at about 2:30 p.m., roughly four hours after his standoff with officers began, said Joe Riehl, special agent in charge of the New Orleans Field Division for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Riehl said ATF agents obtained a warrant charging Davis with...

BATFE arrests not a person, but a gun part. That's right folks, the stupidity has reached a new level. BATFE has arrested a belt fed upper for a MAC 10. Len Savage, a licensed firearms manufacturer, registered an upper as an SBR and submitted it lawfully to BATFE for confirmation. BATFE attempted to have Mr. Savage modify his submission (illegally) to register the item as a machinegun. He of course refused. BATFE has now arrested the upper after using a metal plate, a chain and wire ties (conversion devices) to make it fire. This move by BATFE is the same...

My name is Butch Housman. Months ago I wrote a letter to the editor of this newspaper. As a result, Federal Agent Thomas Chittum asked to move the trial of my friends Leonard and Tom Elliott to Frankfort and cited my letter as cause, claiming I had “polluted the jury pool.” I was named specifically before the court and was criticized for questioning both the mission of his agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, and in particular his case against the Bacon Creek Gun Shop. I didn’t realize I was such an influential scribe. In light of...

"It's extremely irresponsible and most likely actionable negligence," Charlotte, North Carolina, attorney Monroe Whitesides tells me. The Board Certified Specialist in Criminal Law is talking about BATFE's treatment of competition shooter John Glover, who had seven firearms seized and was indicted for manufacturing an illegal machinegun. If convicted, Glover was in danger of federal prison. As part of his investigation, Whitesides accompanied firearms expert Len Savage, of Historic Arms LLC, to the Cabarrus County Sheriff's firing range. There, BATFE Agent Michael Cooney, who wrote the report declaring one of the seized rifles fired "automatically," set out to prove it on...

http://www.atf.gov/firearms/firearmstech/081508manufacturing-of-firearms.pdf 8. A gunsmith regularly buys military-type firearms, Mausers, etc., and sporterizes" them for resale. The gunsmith is in the business of manufacturing firearms and should be licensed as a manufacturer. 9. A gunsmith buys semiautomatic pistols and modifies the slides to accept a new style of sights. The sights are not usually sold with these firearms and do not attach to the existing mounting openings. The gunsmith offers these firearms for sale. This would be considered the manufacturing of firearms, and the gunsmith should be licensed as a manufacturer. 10. A gunsmith buys government model pistols and installs "drop-in"...

An arsenal has been discovered in a Cheatham County man's home. Federal agents have arrested the man who had a house full of weapons. Authorities arrested Steve Lasky Thursday at his home in Trouble Court in Ashland City. They confiscated several weapons including machine guns, rifles and a rocket launcher. Authorities are not ready to comment on the specific inventory. Neighbors watched as agents cleared out the house. Those neighbors knew about the weapons but say Lasky is not dangerous and would not hurt anyone. “I've been in the house. I know what he’s got in that house. He does...