Just as America’s premier gun-policing agency began to crawl out from under the embarrassment of Operation Fast and Furious, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is again under fire — this time for tactical mistakes tied to a separate program designed to get crime guns off the street.
“To say the operation was extremely flawed would be a vast understatement,” Wisconsin Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner told a House Judiciary subcommittee last week.
Operation Fearless, as it was called, was a multi-city program through which ATF opened roughly 37 pawn shops and storefronts around the country, often in or near gang areas, with the purpose of attracting felons and criminals to unknowingly sell their crime guns to the government.