What’s the difference between Roy Alloway and Fast & Furious?

Retired Bremerton Police Detective Roy Alloway reportedly sold hundreds of firearms without a license – possibly putting many guns into the wrong hands – and he’s going to spend two years in a federal prison.

Some people responding to this story in the Tacoma News Tribune are suggesting that Alloway got a break. Had a private citizen done the same thing, they suggest, he might be going away for a longer period.

If this had been John Q. Public, the sentence would have been much longer. Another dirty cop gets off with far less.—‘unrepresented’

If Alloway were an agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, he might not be going away at all, provided, of course, that he could claim he was working on an undercover investigation to trace those guns to kingpins in some drug cartel.

Alloway reportedly sold 700 firearms without a federal firearms license. To do that kind of volume, one is engaged in the business, and for someone to claim he is merely a hobbyist at gun shows doesn’t pass the smell test. Perhaps that’s what led U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton to comment:

“The totality of the circumstances suggests that Mr. Alloway was cavalier about the way he conducted himself.”

Oh, you think?

Q. What makes Roy Alloway a greater threat to the public than Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed a couple of thousand guns to walk into the hands of drug cartel gunmen in Mexico?

A. Alloway isn’t getting cover from the Justice Department, which seems to have been rather knowledgeable about gun walking. Instead, the Justice Department and ATF went after Alloway, who does not appear to be getting much sympathy from other people in law enforcement:

I am a retired law enforcement officer. I can't imagine the stupidity of such a defense as "I didn't understand the law". He damn well knew he was violating the law. And, he will not be considered "one of the good guys" by his fellow officers. He will be lucky if they ever acknowledge they knew him. I sure as hell wouldn't!—‘ciphercarl’

For more than a year, Iowa Senator Charles Grassley has been pursuing Operation Fast and Furious, trying to find out who was responsible. Likewise, California Congressman Darrell Issa has conducted an investigation complete with Capitol Hill hearings before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

They have, in their own words, been systematically stalled and stonewalled, and at times simply ignored. Tens of thousands of subpoenaed documents have been withheld. A federal Border Patrol agent and hundreds of Mexican citizens have been killed.

According to the Kitsap Sun, Alloway had warnings from the ATF that what he was doing required a license:

In March 2005, an ATF agent that had noticed Alloway had already purchased 54 guns, contacted the former Bremerton officer and warned him that he'd need a federal license. The agent told prosecutors that he'd contacted Alloway and the other officer he was working with as a "professional courtesy," given their law enforcement careers.

Another warning, this time in written form, came from ATF in September 2005, after agents had noted he'd purchased another 51 guns. The letter also was sent to the Bremerton Police Department and placed in Alloway's personnel file, prosecutors said.Other warnings came from fellow gun owners and sellers, prosecutors said, including Boerner's Firearms in Gorst.

"He was so confident that he would not be arrested, he flippantly told them, 'I'll just say I'm a collector,'" prosecutors wrote.—Kitsap Sun

When the ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix launched Fast and Furious, they already knew – according to recovered e-mail correspondence – from an earlier operation called Wide Receiver that gunwalking as an investigation strategy was not a good idea.

Is there a dual standard at work? What Alloway did was wrong, and he’s taking the fall for it. He’s lost his gun rights forever. He will lose two years behind a federal prison fence. He’ll lose three more years on federal probation.

What have any of those, other than former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke – who resigned abruptly last August – involved in Fast and Furious lost?

AND NOW, an unrelated quiz.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, President Obama was in Florida the other day and had this to say: