When authorities arrested Mexican drug cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, they found a .50-caliber rifle in his hideout that U.S. officials confirm was supplied through the ATF’s Fast and Furious debacle, Fox News reports. According to federal law enforcement officials, “El Chapo” would station snipers on hilltops armed with such rifles to shoot down Mexican police helicopters.
The rifle recovered from El Chapo’s hideout was just one of roughly 2,000 firearms—including 34 of the .50-caliber rifles—that were supplied, many to the drug cartels, through the government’s disastrous Fast and Furious scheme. After being ordered to stand down when they sought to follow those firearms into Mexico, federal agents lost track of 1,400 of them.
Fast and Furious firearms have been linked to the murders of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata, as well as hundreds of murders in Mexico.
