Yet Another Gun From ATF's Fast And Furious Op Used To Murder Someone

The ATF's failed "Fast and Furious" operation has reared its ugly head again, this time in the form of a high-powered rifle used to murder a police chief in Jalisco, a state deep in central Mexico.

According to the LA Times, the semi-automatic rifle used to kill police chief Luis Lucio Rosales Astorga was traced back to the Lone Wolf Trading Company in Arizona, where 26-year-old Jacob A. Montelongo purchased it in 2010. Montelongo was later arrested, but only after he bought at least 109 firearms during the botched operation. Astorga's bodyguard was also killed, and his wife and a second bodyguard were wounded.

Fast and Furious was supposed to be a sting operation that would sell weapons to Mexican cartels and then track them, but ATF officials almost immediately lost track of the weapons, which have turned up at crime scenes across the US and Mexico ever since.

More than 200 people have been killed in Mexico with Fast and Furious weapons, and a US Border Patrol Agent was killed with one in Phoenix in 2010. ATF officials declined to comment to the LA Times about the newest firearm to surface.

[LAT, image via AP]