Freedom Line Blog

The family of slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry is urging federal officials to accept “responsibility” but not be criminally prosecuted for a horribly bad program to sell guns to drug dealers.  Terry’s cousin, Robert Heyer, tells The Hill that the family doesn’t want government agents (or their Washington superiors) to be indicted for crimes, just for them to take responsibility for being (criminally) stupid.

While it’s a noble sentiment for the Terry family to train its attention on the drug dealers who killed their son and cousin, killing Terry with guns intentionally sold to those drug dealers was a decision deliberately made by ATF officials.  Therefore, it’s arguable that members of the Obama Administration were criminally negligent.

As if to underscore the impossibility of separating responsibility for this fiasco from its criminal consequences, The Hill’s interview with Heyer concludes with a paragraph stating that (in theory) Project Gunrunner worked as planned:

One of the main ways agents would be able to partially track a gun’s path under the operation was if it was found at the scene of a crime and officials were able to trace it back to the original federally authorized purchase, as was the case with the guns found at Terry’s murder scene. It remains unclear whether the guns found at the scene that were linked to the operation were actually used to kill Terry.

Here’s betting that Attorney General Eric Holder and his subordinates responsible for ATF’s policies won’t be using this as a defense.