Stimulus Fail: Administration allocated $10 million to the ATF’s“Project Gunrunner”

Instead of jobs created or saved, Obama should tout people killed or maimed.

(CNS News) – President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus act allocated $10 million to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for a program that traced guns sold to straw purchasers, an operation that was designed to prevent Mexican criminal organizations from obtaining U.S. guns.

The $787-billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus, was passed by Congress and signed into law in February 2009. From this near-trillion dollar trove, the administration allocated $10 million to the ATF’s“Project Gunrunner” to increase staff by 37 persons, according to a November 2010 Department of Justice Inspector General report.
The phased-in hiring of stimulus-funded staff was almost complete by September 2010, according to the IG report.

Project Gunrunner had begun in 2006 to trace U.S. guns being sold to Mexican criminals. As the program evolved, in some cases the tracing of guns included allowing the sale of guns through straw purchases.

The controversial Operation of Fast and Furious, which allowed nearly 2,000 guns to flow into Mexico, was the Phoenix, Ariz. component of Project Gunrunner, a national program.

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