The Obama administration on Friday extended the comment period for controversial proposed rules that would require gun dealers in states bordering Mexico to disclose sales of multiple rifles.
The rules are intended to curb arms smuggling across the border. The administration has received about 13,000 responses to the proposal so far. About 70 percent of the comments were favorable.
The National Rifle Association opposes the plan. The gun rights organization said the administration is using gun crimes in Mexico as an excuse to limit firearm sales — an accusation that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives denies. However, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, co-chairman of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said the proposed rule respects the rights of law-abiding citizens to purchase rifles, while ensuring that law enforcement has a new powerful tool to catch straw purchasers and illegal traffickers.
Two lawmakers, Reps. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) and Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) attempted to include a provision in the omnibus spending bill that is funding most federal programs that would have prohibited the bureau from using federal funds to implement the rules. The amenndment was dropped at the last minute, after lobbying from some lawmakers and Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S.
The ATF has come under fire from congressional Republicans for a gun smuggling operation — “Project Gunrunner” and its “Operation Fast and Furious” component — which allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels in an effort to track them.
The ATF program made it possible for suspected smugglers to buy 1,765 firearms, 797 of which were recovered in Mexico and the United States after they were used in crimes. Of those crime guns, 195 were recovered in Mexico. Two of the firearms traced to the program were found near the U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was killed last year.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, have sent investigators to Arizona to probe the program.
Issa and Grassley also have sent several letters to the Justice Department and the ATF, a DOJ agency, demanding records and documents about the program. Issa has threatened to try to hold ATF officials in contempt of Congress because they have not answered his queries.
