International Gun Bust
A bit back, some readers gave me some grief over the fact I said I didn’t advocate the ATF being completely disbanded. Scaled back and scrutinized definitely but not disbanded. If we’re going to have gun laws (and we are), someone needs to enforce them. One such reason why they’re useful is I’m certain they had a hand in this:
Authorities have taken four men into custody in Honolulu because federal agents said the men were trying to smuggle a shipment of weapons through Honolulu International Airport to Indonesia.
Honolulu was the center of an international arms deal worth more than $3 million, according to agents with the Homeland Security Department and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
The deal was stopped with the help of the American company that was supposed to supply the equipment.
The company I assume was H&K since the list of goodies is their stuff:
882 Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine guns (pictured)
800 Heckler and Koch 9mm handguns
16 Heckler and Koch sniper rifles
The guys claim they were buying them on behalf of the Indonesian government. Maybe they were. We’ll see.
Update: But they still do stuff like this:
ATF agents are always on alert for anything suspicious — including ninjas.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm agents, on campus Tuesday for Project Safe Neighborhoods training, detained a “suspicious individual” near the Georgia Center, University Police Chief Jimmy Williamson said.
…….
After being held in investigative detention, he was found to have violated no criminal laws and was not arrested.“It was surreal,” Ransom said. “I was jogging from Wesley to Snelling when I heard someone yell ‘freeze.’”
Ransom said he thought a friend was playing a joke before he realized officers had guns drawn and pointed at him.
ATF agents had noticed Ransom’s suspicious behavior and clothing and gave chase, apprehending him, Williamson said.
The kid was heading to a pirate vs. ninja event on campus. And, no, I don’t know what that is.
April 12th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
The ATF needs to be disbanded.
April 12th, 2006 at 2:54 pm
Well you can never be too careful with ninjas!
ATF should be disbanded (along with DEA and most everything else that’s not the FBI or Coast Guard) because it’s focused on one narrow category of crime, and thus goes to weird extremes in pursuit of it. If weapons regulation were just one of the things FBI was responsible for, they’d be more likely to give it the appropriate time and attention.
April 12th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
We need the ATF.
Somebody has to collect the liquor and tobacco taxes.
We just need to cut their firearms off and send them back to being accountants.
April 12th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Perhaps, but then again, weapons regulation is just one of the things N.O.P.D. is responsible for, and that didn’t stop them from going much further overboard than the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Everythingelse does.
April 12th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
GET RID OF ATF. They are literaly what the Gestapo and the Red Coats before them were.
But most importantly, they need to be immediately stripped of their ENFORCEMENT capabilities.
C.H.
April 12th, 2006 at 9:54 pm
Who cares about what goes on the jungles of indonesia? Allowing them to kill each other with US sourced arms instead of Russian or Chinese sourced arms is a small price to pay for relieving the American people of a great burden.
April 12th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
slurpy, kind of odd actually as H&K is german, iirc.
April 12th, 2006 at 10:01 pm
If I recall correctly, the ATF [or BATFE or whatever] conducts arson investigations for small municipalities that cannot afford their own full-time arson investigation teams. Arson is an easy crime to prove, yet an almost impossible crime to prosecute.
Easy to prove in that if you took a mason jar full of your accelerant-du-jour and torched your business, a competent arson team would be able to identify the chemical, photograph where the accelerant was splattered on the wall behind the filing cabinet, and show beyond reasonable doubt that someone deliberately set the fire. Now, prosecuting is another story. They can’t show if a greedy owner was after the insurance money, an accountant was looking to destroy evidence of fraud, or a disgruntled worked was seeking revenge. However, without the ATF [if they still do arson investigations] fires like this in small towns across the country would be listed as “unknown origin.”
Of course, in this capacity they’re investigating serious crimes after they have occurred. It’s not like they’re tracking every person who buys a gallon of paint thinner, and looking to regulate who is permitted to keep a five gallon gas can on their property.
April 12th, 2006 at 10:23 pm
The description of the confiscated H & K inventory was giving me quite a woody until you started in with the ATF apprehension of the Atlanta Ninja wannabee.
The ATF seems to exist to jack around honest guns store owners.
I would rather have them focusing on the Ninja/Dungeon and Dragons crowd than haranguing gun store owners about whether they have 36 or 37 Ruger 10/22s in the rear of the store.
Frankly, I wouldn’t mind bagging a few Ninja/Dungeon and Dragon types like a 10 point buck in deer season, but I wouldn’t know what to do with them. I see them all the time this time of year jousting around like a bunch of 6 year olds. I feel like breaking their wood play-swords over my knee, hauling them all to the range, giving them gun safety instructions (after they come down from their respective drugs of choice), and showing them how to have some real fun.
Who was it that got me started on Ninjas anyhow?
April 13th, 2006 at 2:08 am
H&K has factories stateside, no? And the firearms were clearly at least passing through the US.
Regardless, I said this was an acceptable cost to get the ATF off OUR backs.