The ATF were powerless to prevent the sales.
The EXISTING LAW prevents the agency from stopping them.
Are you sure that the ATF forced them to go through with the sales, or that they told the gun shops that they couldn't do anything?
Yes the ATF were "powerless" to effect arrest of the strawbuyers but not because there was no law to cite or probable cause but because a decision was made in the upper echelon of DOJ, to suspend, just in the border region of Arizona, the federal prosecution of Title 18 statutes covering domestic retail sale and transfer of firearms.
Enforcing those laws has been the ATF's primary job for decades but under this new policy, Phoenix ATF Agents were to focus on bringing the US Attorney indictable evidence under Title 22 which covers the international trafficking of arms.
This demanded ATF engage in a "
a high volume trafficking operation" with "
limited or delayed interdiction" which meant ATF just turned their backs for a year and a half as a dozen or so known straw buyers purchased upwards of 2000 guns and just walked away. The recent cover story that it was the Arizona laws or weak gun laws in general that left ATF impotent is just propaganda constructed of despicable insulting lies. Consider the frustration of honest ATF agents horrified at the possible outcome as thousands of AK's, 50 caliber sniper rifles and FN Five-seveN pistols went into the wind. Well, in some cases they went around the US Attorney and federal law and sought prosecution in the state courts of Arizona (yeah, where there are no laws on strawbuying or transfer of guns </sarcasm off>)
"In my opinion, my professional opinion, dozens of firearms traffickers were given a pass by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona. Despite the existence of “probable cause” in many cases, there were no indictments, no prosecutions, and criminals were allowed to walk free. In short, their office policies, in my opinion, helped pave a dangerous path.
Fortunately, the same could not be said of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office – state prosecutors – to which we agents were forced to turn for prosecution of firearm cases. Victor Varela and his associates, who trafficked .50 caliber rifles directly to Mexican Drug Cartels, one of which was used to kill a Mexican military commander were successfully prosecuted by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. This was after the case had been declined for federal prosecution by Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley due to what he referred to as “corpus delecti” issues.
Mr. Varela, sadly, was released from prison last July, because of lesser sentencing guidelines that applied in state court, but the alternative- no prosecution- in my eyes was unacceptable.
Another case, which involved a corrupt federal firearms licensee, who was supplying guns to several firearms trafficking organizations, was declined by Mr. Hurley. This particular dealer, in his post- arrest statement, admitted that “approximately 1000 of his firearms” were trafficked to Mexico. Over one half -dozen of that dealer’s firearms were located around the body of Arturo Beltran-Leyva, the head of Beltran-Leyva Cartel, after he was killed in a fierce gun battle with the Mexican Naval Infantry in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
Due the recalcitrance of the United States Attorney’s Office, cases such as these were presented for prosecution to the Arizona Attorney General’s office, where state law carries lesser penalties than they did under the federal statute. I believe that this situation, wherein the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona in Phoenix particularly, declined most of our firearm cases, was at lest one factor which led to the debacle that is now known as “Operation Fast and Furious.”
ATF Special Agent Peter Forcelli, testimony before the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, June 6, 2011