The Obama administration should be scrambling over this

A .50 caliber rifle found at the hideout of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has been definitively linked to the “Fast and Furious” gun-running scheme administered by President Barack Obama’s administration, according to TheBlaze.

The .50 caliber rifle — serious enough to take down a helicopter — was one of 19 weapons found in the escaped drug lord’s Sinaloa hideout after his capture.

Mexican officials had given eight of the weapons to American authorities to determine their provenance. According to the Justice Department, none of these weapons were linked to Fast and Furious. However, a further 11 were turned over, and this group yielded a link to the disgraced operation.

The rifle had been purchased in July of 2010 by an unknown source. How it ended up in El Chapo’s hands is anyone’s guess, since — like most of the guns in the gun-walking operation — the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives lost track of it.

Only 885 of the roughly 2,000 firearms in the “gun walking” scheme have been recovered. Some of them have been used in violent crimes, most notably the 2010 gunfight that killed Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

“ATF and the department deeply regret that firearms associated with Operation Fast and Furious have been used by criminals in the commission of violent crimes, particularly crimes resulting in the deaths of civilians and law enforcement officials,” Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik said in a March 15 letter to congressional investigators.

“Deeply regret” is probably the wrong term to use when you’re talking about weapons that have fallen into the hands of El Chapo and other thugs all because of an ill-considered Obama administration attempt to weaken gun rights by selling weapons to those who shouldn’t have been able to buy them and then attempting to track them.

The Obama administration should be scrambling over this — after all, this links one of their worst operations to one of the most notorious drug lords of all time.

People need to face charges for this, and they should start with former Attorney General Eric Holder.