I've been following the Project Gunwalker story for a while.

For those who are not familiar with it, the story line is this: The BATFE, that's right - the Federal Government - has been intentionally allowing "straw sales" of rifles and pistols to go through and then letting those guns be transported to Mexico.

These are sales where the person doing the buying isn't the actual intended owner of the weapon.  These guns are often bought in bulk, many at a time.  It's not illegal to buy a lot of guns, even all at once, but it is a felony to buy them for someone else.

Anyway, BATFE was allegedly allowing this to go on and approving sales they knew were bogus.  Starting in 2009 several gun stores started getting suspicious - they were having people come in and paying with cash - sometimes with cash in paper bags - for multiple guns at once.  Specifically, it is alleged that over five hundred AK-47 semi-automatic rifles and over 2,500 weapons in total, including rifles and pistols, were purchased in this manner.

The claim is made that the BATFE literally watched the sales happen, each checked through NICS' "background check", each approved, despite being alerted by the gun store owners that the sales were suspicious. 

The stores were told to proceed with the sales intentionally.

Let me repeat this: The allegation is that the BATFE intentionally allowed these weapons to be purchased despite knowing they were fraudulent straw purchases and then allowed them to be unlawfully transported into Mexico where they were delivered to various Mexican outlaws - including drug gangs.

Remember, we've been told that a lot of guns that Mexican drug lords are using are coming from the US?  Well, no kidding, they are, if this allegation is correct: Our own government was knowingly allowing them to be purchased and illegally transported across the border.

That's bad.

What's worse is this:

Then, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. The serial numbers on the two assault rifles found at the scene matched two rifles ATF watched Jaime Avila buy in Phoenix nearly a year before. Officials won't answer whether the bullet that killed Terry came from one of those rifles. But the nightmare had come true: "walked" guns turned up at a federal agent's murder.

One of our border patrol agents was murdered and two of the weapons that our own government allowed to be illegally purchased and transported across the border to Mexico were found at the scene.

Did the bullets come out of those guns?  BATFE refuses to say.

Does it matter?

I've been sitting on this story for over a month because without a serial number match there's no hard evidence that the guns that were "walked" were involved in the murder.  But now that CBS is willing to go "on the record" with a claim that the weapons were in fact a match the evidence is now clear and convincing.

The people in BATFE that allowed those sales to go through would appear to be personally guilty of felony murder, just as if I, knowing you intend to an unlawful thing, drive you to the bank - and you stick it up and a shoot a teller.  I go to prison for murder as well as you, because I knew or had reason to know you were going to do an illegal thing.  In this case the sale and transport of the weapons was unlawful in the first instance; that should meet the legal requirement for an accessory to murder charge.

More importantly, in my view BATFE no longer serves a legitimate purpose in our government.  It turned into a mechanism to provide murderous drug gangs in Mexico with over two thousand firearms that they allowed to be knowingly purchased and transported in an unlawful manner in the United States.

And as a consequence, in whole or part, a US Citizen and Border Patrol Agent is dead, and God knows how many Mexicans have been murdered on top of it.

The arguments about "drug gangs getting American guns" are true but irrelevant.  Our government is supplying them.  Of course the Mexican Drug Goons have them - they got them with permission of our own government.

It is time to dissolve this agency as it has gone from a law enforcement organ to a government organ that now appears to have intentionally participated in over 2,500 felonies, at least one murder of a US Federal Officer, and who knows how many murders of Mexican citizens.

Your government at work folks.

Update: Here's another story from a different online media outlet as well: http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/2976/