The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — perennially hogtied by the gun lobby's power over Congress — made a colossally dumb decision when it concocted a sting operation that let 2,020 high-powered weapons slip across the border into Mexico. The goal of Operation Fast and Furious, begun in 2009, was to tolerate suspicious large-scale purchases of assault weapons on the American side of the border in order to track the guns all the way up the... (GunPolicy.org)