The dispute over the regulation comes at a time when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ efforts to investigate straw purchasing and smuggling across the border to Mexico has come under sharp congressional scrutiny related to Operation Fast and Furious, an effort by the agency’s Phoenix division to uncover a large network of cartel-linked gunrunners.
In that operation, federal agents monitored “straw buyers” who bought about 2,000 guns, but did not intervene to arrest them or seize the weapons because they were trying to identify higher-ups in the network. But the bureau then lost track of many of the guns, some of which were smuggled into Mexico and two of which later turned up at the scene of a shootout in Arizona where a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed.
