[1] The primary tactic of Project Gunrunner is interdiction of straw purchasers and unlicensed dealers to prevent legal guns from entering the black market; between 2005 and 2008, 650 such cases involving 1,400 offenders and 12,000 firearms were referred for prosecution.
[5][6] The ATF determined that the Mexican cartels had become the leading gun trafficking organizations operating in the southwest U.S. and is working in collaboration with other agencies and the Government of Mexico to expand the eTrace firearm tracing software system.
As part of eTrace expansion, the ATF continues to provide training to Mexican and Central American countries to ensure that the technology is utilized to a greater extent.
The use of "stimulus" money to fund Project Gunrunner is controversial, given the ATF Phoenix Field Division's reported initiative of allowing known criminals to purchase guns in an effort to gain intelligence on the cartels (Operation Fast and Furious).
[14] Countries have access to American gun owner identities and information (first purchaser only) as a result of traces of recovered firearms contained in the database.
The ATF also works closely with these agencies' task forces which operate along the Southwest border, sharing intelligence, and conducting joint investigations.
By early 2009, Project Gunrunner had resulted in approximately 650 cases by the ATF, in which more than 1,400 defendants were referred for prosecution in federal and state courts and more than 12,000 firearms were involved.
[21] However this conclusion is seriously flawed and not supported by ATF statistics, which only includes guns successfully traced and these are not necessarily connected to drug traffickers.
[24][25] The gun-rights group Gun Owners of America accused the ATF of attempting to "boost statistics of seized firearms with American commercial provenance from Mexican crime scenes.
[28] Under Fast and Furious, the ATF attache at the Mexico City Office (MCO) was not notified (unlike Wide Receiver and most other cases).