How the hell did the FBI LOSE 265 firearms?

July 17, 2001 6:11 PM

How the hell did the FBI LOSE 265 firearms? Love the line "lost OR stolen". A total of 449 pistols, handguns, rifles, shotguns and sub-machine guns are missing, a "small number" of which may have been used in local crimes, such as robberies. Glad to know CSIS isn't the only intelligence agency that screws up regularly. God bless america.
posted by drgonzo (19 comments total)

does not suprise me. my favorite stolen firearm story is about the .45 that was stolen from wm. howard taft. That weapon killed an estimated 10 people. He was the supreme court justice at the time if i recall correctly.
posted by clavdivs at 6:41 PM on July 17, 2001

The sad part though is that those in charge will not get booted out but might at best/worst be transferred or given a nice retirement package to encourage them to leave...whom do you pick to investigate the FBI?
posted by Postroad at 6:50 PM on July 17, 2001

So .00898% of their 50,000 the firearms in their care were lost or stolen. .0142% of their computers were lost or stolen as well. Any corporation the same size would applaud these shrink numbers. What's the big deal?
posted by revbrian at 7:26 PM on July 17, 2001

Because it's the FBI, we should hold them to a higher standard. If McDonald's loses the secret sauce recipe, it's no biggie whereas this is alarming.
posted by owillis at 7:33 PM on July 17, 2001

[Because it's the FBI, we should hold them to a higher standard]

This is a far higher standard than is reasonable to expect in a large organization. It's not hard to get handguns anywhere in the us, who cares if they came from the FBI or not?

What exactly is alarming? That, the human race isn't perfect?

There are plenty of things to be concerned about when it comes to the FBI and this isn't one of them. Perhaps if the FBI had managed to lose 49,551 additional weapons we could have avoided ruby ridge and waco.
posted by revbrian at 7:46 PM on July 17, 2001

They're GUNS, revbrian. If any corporation lost that many guns, they'd be in a lot of trouble. These aren't staplers and envelopes. People will likely die because of this "shrinkage."
posted by Doug at 7:50 PM on July 17, 2001

They're GUNS, revbrian. If any corporation lost that many guns, they'd be in a lot of trouble. These aren't staplers and envelopes. People will likely die because of this "shrinkage."

I have to say I agree with this statement - and I'm generally thought of as "Mr. 2nd Amendment" amongst those who know me.

If I, as a private citizen, were to simply "misplace" my firearms and someone were killed, I would be liable. I expect to see the FBI held to the same reasonable standard.

I'm curious to see if we can stick to the merits of this story (How could the FBI be this boneheaded) and not turn it into a 2nd Amendment debate....
posted by hadashi at 8:20 PM on July 17, 2001

[If any corporation lost that many guns, they'd be in a lot of trouble.]

You don't think the army loses this many firearms?
posted by revbrian at 8:27 PM on July 17, 2001

hadashi: Guns are stolen every freakin' day. Ever looked at police reports in your area, to see how many guns are stolen from unlocked vehicles? I've never heard of a major case of a gun owner being held liable for a death in such case. But guns are used in more cases than just murders. Try bank heists, convenience store robberies, muggings, etc. Not that this makes the FBI right, far from it, but I don't see the strict liability thing in real life very much.
posted by raysmj at 8:28 PM on July 17, 2001

[If I, as a private citizen, were to simply "misplace" my firearms and someone were killed, I would be liable. I expect to see the FBI held to the same reasonable standard.]

It's not like guns are rare! I have no problem with each individual who lost their firearm being reprimanded severely, I just don't think it's the end of the world.
posted by revbrian at 8:29 PM on July 17, 2001

So .00898% of their 50,000 the firearms in their care were lost or stolen.

Actually revbrain, it's 8.98% percent. Quite a lot more. :)
posted by pnevares at 8:59 PM on July 17, 2001

Okay, now I'm the moron. I blame it on my sister talking to me on the phone while I try to MeFi.

It's 0.898%.
posted by pnevares at 9:00 PM on July 17, 2001

I think the higher standard argument applies mainly because they have access to items corporations or individuals cannot have, namely classified information and automatic weapons. Its nice to know that not only is the government violating my privacy now the dude who took the laptop from the airport bar knows I'm the author of "A Teenager's Guide to Burning Flags."

I also don't see anything wrong with punishing agents or Freeh for negligence.
posted by skallas at 9:04 PM on July 17, 2001

I would expect a company to fire a security guard who lost a weapon. I would expect at least that from the FBI. It should be (maybe it is?) a criminal offense to "lose" (sell? give away? trade for something? who knows?) a gun.
posted by pracowity at 11:46 PM on July 17, 2001

>This is a far higher standard than is reasonable to expect in a large organization

You're right owillis, it ain't McDonalds. It's the F-B-I. It's supposed to be a world-class, ultra-high-security-type institution. So now some underworld assassin is crossing the border using my social security number, and a passport bearing my name, on his way to whack some dude in Colombia with a sub-machine gun.
OR
Some kid finds a .45 in the gutter that Joe FBI agent dropped on the way to work and shoots me in the head with it while I'm walking down the street with my girlfriend.

I find the FBI's commitment to security (something that they are supposed to be the world EXPERTS in) frighteningly low.

>It's not like guns are rare
And maybe it's just 'cause I live in Canada where we don't have the RIGHT to carry firearms, we consider it a PRIVELIDGE, but why the nonchalant attitude towards guns being everywhere?
posted by drgonzo at 4:09 AM on July 18, 2001

Maybe they should look in the filing cabinets where they found all those McVeigh documents.
posted by briank at 6:41 AM on July 18, 2001

It is a bad mark for fbi and the stolen does not bother as much as lost. it was common practice for servicemen to take home their side-arm (up until nam i think) I tried doing the stats. # of agents over ten years etc. though the figure is small, was not a weapon or two responsiable for deaths because they landed in the hands of criminals. This is were i agree, secure them weapons, get the pikes sharpened. (remember the stolen tank in california) I dont like last nights medias coverage. (peter jennings breaking the story right at 6:30:30.)((they didnt do the math, which would shrink the 'magnitude' of the story and this is sad because it is indictitive of main stream media and their assumptions on what they think the american people think))
posted by clavdivs at 7:24 AM on July 18, 2001

I read another story on this that said that these numbers are totals for the last 10 years.

That makes these slippages, losses, whatever, even more miniscule than the numbers presented above. Even if we should hold them to a higher standard (and I agree that we should), this is an insanely low level of loss.

The other thing to keep in mind is exactly how tough it is to accurately keep track of highly valuable, highly mobile items. Especially when this is all done on paper (which I guarantee it was up until recently). When I was a weapons officer in the Navy, we had to turn in all of our ammunition ($10 million worth) so we could go into drydock . We turned up about $30K short. That's .3% slippage, which is really good from one point of view and really bad from another.

Eventually we managed to account for almost $27K, after spending 2 months painstakingly going through thousands of paper documents to track the ammo's use and movement over the previous 5 years. That's .03% slippage. The remainder couldn't be accounted for - and somebody had to pay for it.

The biggest problem with this sort of thing is that somebody always has to pay for it. Even if you can't prove malfeasance, you have to have a scapegoat. I had only been responsible for the ammo for 18 months, I found the problems and brought them to attention of my superiors, but I got to be the scapegoat.
posted by Irontom at 12:15 PM on July 18, 2001

[I read another story on this that said that these numbers are totals for the last 10 years]

So most of these were under clinton!? Good lord, we've unearthed another right-wing-conspiracy!
posted by revbrian at 2:47 PM on July 18, 2001