“Since Operation Fast and Furious, I’ve conducted broad oversight with respect to gunrunning operations and the ATF’s role with respect to them,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, in his position as Ranking Member of the Committee on the Budget, wrote Tuesday in a letter to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Director Steve Dettelbach. “Accordingly, I write today regarding concerning reports that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) defunded and shut down an interagency effort, Project Thor, to combat weapons trafficking networks that are used by Mexican cartels within the U.S. to smuggle weapons to Mexico.
Citing CBS News reports that “Mexican drug cartels have been smuggling a vast arsenal of even military-grade weapons out of the U.S. with the help of American citizens,” Grassley questioned why “ATF denied Project Thor funding for fiscal year 2022, and law enforcement, intelligence, and diplomatic officials told the news outlet that the current approach to combat and dismantle cartel gunrunning networks across the U.S. was ‘ineffective.’”
He further questioned why, with the reported scope of the trafficking and the threat it represents, the ATF was instead focused on “targeting law-abiding gun owners and sellers,” requiring “any law-abiding citizen who sells a single firearm online to register for a Federal Firearms License” which “could subject them to warrantless inspections of their homes, an exercise that will undoubtedly consume limited ATF resources. In addition, the ATF has revoked a record number of FFLs under its “zero tolerance” policy which has been criticized for punishing small business gun shop owners for innocent or mere administrative errors.”
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