A gaggle of House Democrats Tuesday referred to as for motion from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, days after CBS News published an investigation which discovered dozens of legislation enforcement officers illegally sold firearms, even weapons of warfare, throughout 23 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.
Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California, who serves on each the House Oversight Committee and on the Homeland Security Committee, wrote to ATF Director Steven Dettelbach stating his “grave considerations” over the report that sure legislation enforcement officers had been “exploiting their positions to accumulate and illegally distribute firearms.”
Garcia, joined in his letter by Rep. Dan Goldman of New York and Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida, requested the ATF to deal with a collection of questions by Jan. 15, 2025, on severe systemic vulnerabilities uncovered by the CBS News investigation.
“Reporting means that there could also be severe systemic vulnerabilities in present machine gun and sawed-off shotgun and rifle laws and enforcement mechanisms, jeopardizing public security by enabling the proliferation of harmful weapons, usually into the fingers of worldwide traffickers and arranged crime teams,” they wrote.
The congressmen famous within the letter that, in line with the most recently available ATF data between 2017 and 2021, practically 26,000 weapons had been traced from American crime scenes again to a authorities company, legislation enforcement, or the navy. While some firearms may need been misplaced on account of negligence, hundreds of firearms reported lacking by legislation enforcement businesses had been later found to have been improperly bought or traded, the letter stated.
The CBS News investigation uncovered no less than 50 instances of police illegally promoting their weapons on-line, via sellers, out of their houses, or the again of their vehicles — in lots of instances at steep markups.
The congressmen cited the troubling case of Bradley Wendt — a former police chief for Adair, Iowa, who was convicted earlier this 12 months on federal expenses associated to acquiring military-grade firearms below false pretenses — for example of a broader sample amongst legislation enforcement. He was sentenced to 5 years in jail.
Wendt at occasions earned greater than a 90% revenue margin, CBS News present in court docket information.
Local U.S. legislation enforcement businesses must get hold of permission from the ATF to get entry to high-powered weapons akin to battlefield weapons, together with machine weapons, utilized by U.S. and NATO forces in battle zones. The CBS News investigation discovered the bureau sometimes doesn’t vet the appropriateness of the machine gun purposes for a division or monitor the place the weapons find yourself — and despite the fact that the legislation has been on the books for greater than three a long time — the bureau only started vetting every application in 2023.
The lawmakers highlighted their concern that there was no complete vetting course of from the ATF to make sure requests from legislation enforcement for high-powered weaponry had been respectable.
“We are deeply involved that the absence of rigorous oversight and follow-up audits has allowed people to use these loopholes and bypass federal legislation,” the congressmen wrote.
contributed to this report.
