Jon Stewart:
Complete background on this story from the LA Times and NPR is below, including coverage of Congressional hearings held this week.
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Further reading...
Many guns intended for Mexico drug cartels ended up in U.S., agents testify - LA Times
'These firearms will continue to turn up at crime scenes on both sides of the border for years to come,' says the congressman overseeing a hearing on a controversial surveillance project.
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Lawmakers Rip Gun-Tracking Effort In Mexico - NPR
The scandal is widening over a U.S. law enforcement operation that lost track of guns later discovered at crime scenes on the Southwest border. The Justice Department and Republicans in Congress are trading accusations over who approved the operation. But what's getting lost in all the politics may be the larger effort to take down violent drug and gun traffickers.
Last year, the Justice Department's inspector general criticized the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for aiming too low in its investigations of gun trafficking along the border with Mexico. Federal agents were arresting lots of people — alleged straw buyers — for purchasing guns in the U.S. under false pretenses. They got minimal, if any, prison time from judges swamped with cases.
Many of those weapons tied to the straw buyers eventually found their way to violent drug gangs that operate in Mexico. But, for legal and practical reasons, investigators usually stopped well short of those big targets, or what lawyer Paul Pelletier called "the head of the snake."
"In all these cases, when you're talking about straw buyers, or straw purchasers, you're talking about people who are very fungible," says Pelletier, a prosecutor for 27 years who recently joined the Mintz Levin law firm in Washington, D.C. "You can arrest and charge and convict a hundred straw buyers and you're not going to have an impact on the organization, you're not going to help public safety."