[steve-howard]

I'll admit, I read the first couple pages' worth then skipped towards the ends. This bothered me:

"An ATF agent posing as an arms dealer spent weeks trying to wheedle Diveroli into selling arms. Diveroli refused, but he couldn't resist bragging about his exploits; as agents recorded his every word, he talked about hunting alligators and hogs in the Everglades with a .50-caliber rifle. Finally, the ATF agent lured Diveroli to a meeting, asking him to bring along a gun so they could go shooting together. Diveroli didn't bring a weapon — he knew that would constitute a felony. But the ATF agent, who had thoughtfully brought along a gun of his own, handed Diveroli a Glock to try out."

Sounds exactly like entrapment to me. Guy didn't want to break the law, but the LEO brought along an extra gun just to incriminate him.

[VladRussian]

Because of his youthful stupidity and greed, Diveroli thought what he played the system. If we look at the situation from outside : government got cheap ammo, and there was only one problem - it was illegal, so somebody needed to be scape goated. They needed to bury Diveroli. I liked how FBI raided their offices just on the mere basis of factually wrong whistleblow about Chinese AKs - one gets to wonder how that was enough for a raid and who really blown the whistle. The entrapment was a nice professional icing on the cake. The house always wins :)

[JanezStupar]

Indeed.

Diveroli didn't even get bent over - he bent over himself. The article really spells out how clueless these guys were. This image springs to mind (http://www.just-whatever.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/dont...).

Its a minor hobby of mine to learn and reason about military and political history. And you have always keep in mind that everything you see and hear is a lie and a feint, covering another lie and a feint and that truth lies several layers deep. Gears withing gears and feints within feints.

These guys broke all the rules in the book - the government saved their asses by taking them in. Otherwise they would get same treatment as their Albanian partner did. It's not like they were the first to try to one-up their "partners". In this kind of industry one can even gain traction, but one must know that there is always a bigger and meaner fish out there - and that it will come after you.