The White House says tracking the bulk sale of high-powered rifles from border-state gun shops is not an emergency and has rejected a request from the U.S. agency that monitors weapons sales to do so without public review.
Instead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' proposed requirement that firearms dealers near the Mexican border report multiple purchases of high-powered rifles will undergo a standard, three-month review period, opening it to public comment.
The agency wants to require gun dealers in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to report the sales of two or more rifles to the same customer within a five-day period, but it is not proposing any ban on sales. A similar requirement already exists for handguns.
"This would just allow us to put out an investigative lead at the time of the sale," said ATF spokesman Scot Thomasson.
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Last month, 20 people were federally indicted for allegedly participating in a ring that bought more than 700 guns to be smuggled into Mexico for use by a drug cartel. In that case, several times individuals bought dozens of AK-47s, as well as .50-caliber high-powered rifles capable of shooting down airplanes, even after rifles they purchased earlier had been seized.
For example, on Dec. 9, 2009, Douglas police found nine AK-47 rifles hidden in a car bumper. The guns were tracked back to Sean Christopher Steward, who had bought them in a batch of 40 AK-47-type rifles at Lone Wolf Trading Co. in Glendale the day before.
After that seizure, Steward bought at least 143 more weapons, mostly AK-47s from Lone Wolf, before his January 2011 indictment.
Indeed, almost all of the hundreds of guns identified in the indictment were sold by the Lone Wolf Trading Co., which was also identified in a Washington Post investigative series last year as the top seller of weapons found at Mexican crime scenes.
White House Office of Management and Budget spokeswoman Meg Reilly said the administration called the ATF last week, informing the agency its proposal - which was published in the Federal Register in December - was not deemed an emergency, which would have cut short public review.
Reilly said that to speed things along, the White House allowed for the review clock to start when ATF posted the notice in December, so it's almost concluded, with Feb. 14 being the last day for the public to send comments.
