TexasCHLforum.com

SAN ANTONIO - ATF agents here knew Harmon Chester Strunk Jr. as a "gun-show groupie" who bought hundreds of guns at bargain prices from elderly people and sold them for a handsome profit.

His favorite sales outlets were newspaper classified ads and ubiquitous gun shows, where private sellers displaying tables full of weaponry bump up against federally licensed dealers to feed the Lone Star State's seemingly insatiable appetite for guns.

Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tracked Strunk's buying and selling and found out he wasn't particular about his customers.

Federal law prohibits sales to convicted criminals, but agents learned that youthful gang members actually sought Strunk out.

Agents sent in a felon to buy from Strunk as part of an undercover sting. They arrested Strunk soon thereafter on charges of selling a weapon to a felon and selling without a license.

In the aftermath of the Newtown, Conn., massacre, the focus on gun shows mostly concerns the effort by gun-control advocates to close the "gun show loophole'' - the fact that unlike sales by federally licensed dealers, private transactions at shows and elsewhere do not require background checks. Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote approved a universal background check measure by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

But what stands out about the Strunk case is not the background-check issue but rather that the ATF - the gun lobby's perennial whipping boy - pursued it at all, given the political firestorm that erupted on Capitol Hill over previous gun show investigations.

ATF got its knuckles rapped by ......

texanjoker wrote:I would rather see ATF enforcing existing gun laws then having our govt pass new ones that effect all law abiding gun owners. If the guy was a snitch that says a lot.