It’s bad when you have a story that, at face value, seems so absurd that you feel obligated to note that it’s not satire or else people would think that you’re just making fun of things.
But I’m not. This is a real story. It isn’t satire, and, frankly, I wish that it were. Because it would make me feel a lot better about who is enforcing gun laws and other laws in our country.
But here we are, with a story about how one part of the Federal government is criticizing another part of the Federal government about their handling of firearms. It’s just bizarre.
Mary Lou Lang gives us details:
The Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general has identified concerns with the handling of employee-issued firearms by the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) after parts of a firearm, which was to be destroyed in 2019, were used to commit a crime by a private citizen four years later.
In a recent report, the Office of Inspector General noted how firearm parts were stored in open bins that were accessible to thousands of DEA and FBI employees, as well as contractors.
“The OIG identified these concerns in connection with an investigation of a recovered privately made firearm (PMF), also known as a ‘Ghost Gun,’ that contained an unserialized frame attached to a slide and barrel of a DEA employee-issued firearm,” Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote in a memo to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and DEA Administrator Anne Milgram.
According to Horowitz, DEA records showed “the slide and barrel were submitted for destruction by the DEA in 2019, yet the parts were recovered during an arrest of a private citizen by local law enforcement in 2023.”
Although the DEA and FBI both told Horowitz that they no longer store firearm parts awaiting destruction in open bins, neither agency currently has policies to address the issue nor a documentation process in place to track the firearms and parts.
That’s right, an FBI firearm that we were told was destroyed was, instead, disassembled, and parts were used in a firearm used to commit a crime.
But, hey, they don’t store them that way, and people can’t just walk by and take parts anymore, so, we can trust them that everything is okay, right?
Even though they still don’t have a way to track parts.
I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t increase my faith in how they can protect me and my family from criminals, and it certainly doesn’t inspire confidence that they’ll make gun control work.