By Seattle Times Editorial Board Revelations about the sloppy, arrogant business practices of a nationally known Skagit County retailer with a lethal inventory are stunning. To know that Kesselring Gun Shop had been arming generations with virtually no regulatory oversight, even after grotesque violations were discovered, made Seattle Times reporter Mike Carter’s story all the…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com It took eight years for the ATF to shut down a gun store in Washington state that had nearly 2,500 guns stolen or lost, Raw Story reports.To put that into perspective, there were fewer than 200 combined guns missing at the state’s other 1,093 stores. “Stunning,” James Zammillo, a former ATF deputy…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A gunmaker is suing the ATF for claiming the company is selling a gun silencer. Gunmaker Sig Sauer said that the ATF wrong classified its “muzzle brake” as a silencer. “If classified as a silencer, no market exists for the subject device given that it will not silence, muffle, or diminish the…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder lashed out at the ATF’s use and treatment of people with mental disabilities in undercover stings, saying he is “greatly troubled” by the information, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. “The notion that you would use mentally unstable people, you would tattoo them, that you would do ridiculous…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Undercover ATF agents renting a storefront had their energy shut off by the landlord because they exceeded their monthly allotment. The agents responded by getting the landlord’s account information and calling the electricity company pretending to be him, an internal investigation revealed, the Wall Street Journal reports. “Account statements were improperly taken…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com ATF Director B. Todd Jones’ first appearance before Congress wasn’t a pleasant one. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that congressional members from both sides slammed Jones over the agency’s blunders in undercover storefront operations. Some of the problems included using people with mental disabilities to promote undercover operations. Jones defended the agency,…
By Jeffrey Anderson For ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — Nutveena Sirirojnananont is staring at a possible 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine for ordering eight guns online that she directed to a federally-licensed firearms dealer in New Hampshire, but she’s all but guaranteed a fraction of that. The Newmarket, NH, woman pleaded guilty in…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A key figure in the Fast & Furious gun-running operation was permitted to collect two salaries while on leave from his federal government job, the Washington Times reports. The Justice Department’s inspector general created the report after finding that three of William McMahon’s superiors with the ATF “exercised poor judgment” by allowing…
