“There is an iron river of guns that flows South into Mexico [from the United States] to supply criminal organizations on the border,” says Tom Mangan, senior special agent with Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) in Phoenix. “They are in the market for machine guns, hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles,” he continues. That’s right. The drug gangs can’t buy that and other military stuff like the 40MM grenades (the silver things in the upper left) and the rifles with launchers shown in the photo below in Mexico, so they drive to the United States and purchase them from American gun dealers at retail. Isn’t that the story you’ve been told? Well, congratulations. America’s First Amendment protected propaganda ministry has punked you on another important issue — this time on behalf of dissembling officials and gun confiscation advocates.
For the benefit of those who may not know, machine guns (not the same thing as the demonized “semi-automatic”), hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and other such military items are illegal to possess by US civilians, which means they are not for sale in gun stores. OK, in the interest of extreme accuracy for anyone in need, there are some civilian owned machine-guns in America, but they all have to have been registered with the ATF by 1986 as evidence that a special Treasury tax has been paid and the owner’s residence state has to approve the possession. What’s more, none of these arms has ever been involved in a crime, to my knowledge, and all are considered very pricey collectors items. That means they are not for sale to or in the hands of Mexican drug goons. ...
Read the rest here.
Another reporter notes that legal U.S. arms exports (approved by the U.S. government) may be contributing to Mexican drug cartels' firepower [article has lots of stats and links to sources]:
Mainstream media and Beltway pundits and politicians in recent months have unleashed a wave of panic in the nation linking the escalading violence in Mexico, and its projected spread into the U.S., to illegal weapons smuggling.
The smokescreen being spread by these official mouthpieces of manufactured consensus is that a host of criminal operators are engaging in straw (or fraudulent) gun purchases, making clandestine purchases at U.S. gun shows or otherwise assembling small caches of weapons here in the states in order to smuggle them south of the border to the “drug cartels.”
The Obama administration is now sending hundreds of additional federal agents to the border in an effort to interdict this illegal arms smuggling to reassure an agitated middle-America that Uncle Sam will get these bad guys. The cascade of headlines from mainstream media outlets printing drug-war pornography assures us in paragraphs inserted between the titillation that the ATF’s Operation Gunrunner and other similar get-tough on gun-seller programs will save America from the banditos of Mexico.
To be sure, some criminal actors in the U.S. are smuggling small arms across the border. But the drug war in Mexico is not being fought with Saturday night specials, hobby rifles and hunting shotguns. The drug trafficking organizations are now in possession of high-powered munitions in vast quantities that can’t be explained by the gun-show loophole.
At least one report in a mainstream media outlet deserves credit for recognizing that trend.
“[Mexican] traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals,” states a recent story in the Los Angeles Times. “The proliferation of heavier armaments points to a menacing new stage in the Mexican government's 2-year-old war against drug organizations. …”
Narco News, in a report last December [“Juarez murders shine a light on an emerging Military Cartel”] also examined the increasing militarization of narco-trafficking groups in Mexico and pointed out that U.S. military-issued ammunition popped up in an arms cache seized in Reynosa, Mexico, in November 2008 that was linked to the Zetas, a mercenary group that provides enforcement services to Mexican narco-trafficking organizations.
So where are these military-grade weapons really coming from?
Rather than address that valid question head on, the mainstream media, and now even the Obama administration, have been attempting to paint lipstick on the pig, trumpeting, in the words of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the “courageous efforts undertaken by [Mexican] President Calderon.”
And the “courageous” Mexican President Felipe Calderon, for his part, redirects the blame for the Mexican narco-organization’s increasing firepower back to the U.S.
In a story published by the Associated Press in late February of this year, Mexican President Calderon is quoted alleging the following:
We need to stop the flow of guns and weapons towards Mexico. Let me express to you that we've seized in this two years more than 25,000 weapons and guns, and more than 90 percent of them came from United States, and I'm talking from missiles launchers to machine guns and grenades.
But no matter how hard Calderon and U.S. officials try to disguise the pig, it still oinks.
A Narco News investigation into the flow of arms across the U.S. border appears to lead right back to the systemic corruption that afflicts a vast swath of the Mexican government under President Felipe Calderon and this nation’s own embrace of market-driven free-trade policies.
The deadliest of the weapons now in the hands of criminal groups in Mexico, particularly along the U.S. border, by any reasonable standard of an analysis of the facts, appear to be getting into that nation through perfectly legal private-sector arms exports, measured in the billions of dollars, and sanctioned by our own State Department. These deadly trade commodities — grenade launchers, explosives and “assault” weapons —are then, in quantities that can fill warehouses, being corruptly transferred to drug trafficking organizations via their reach into the Mexican military and law enforcement agencies, the evidence indicates.
“As in other criminal enterprises in Mexico, such as drug smuggling or kidnapping, it is not unusual to find police officers and military personnel involved in the illegal arms trade,” states an October 2007 report by the for-profit global intelligence group Stratfor, which Barron’s magazine once dubbed the Shadow CIA. “… Over the past few years, several Mexican government officials have been arrested on both sides of the border for participating in the arms trade.” ...
Another Big Hollywood columnist says the "iron river" lie is yet another attempt to bypass the Second Amendment:
... Here is how the logic goes: Drug cartels are coming into the United States and buying “assault“ weapons. If we would outlaw the legal sale of these guns to American citizens the problem would disappear! You see, the Democrat logic goes, the reason there’s drug violence on the Mexican border isn’t corruption in Mexico, lack of enforcement of our existing gun laws, or an ability to control our nation’s boundaries. The reason is that you and I have the right to own a weapon that could be used to protect our home and family in a time of national crisis.
Let’s take a minute here and test your critical thinking skills. Ready? Here are some of Ms. Lowey’s statements. I may be paraphrasing them a bit as I was trying to write them down while continuing to watch the interview without the help of my DVR, but I believe I’ve captured them fairly accurately.
Ms. Lowey said that, “Mexican Drug Cartels are operating in 239 cities in the United States.” The idea behind that talking point is to shock and horrify you with the vision of drug lords invading the country so that you’ll be willing to give up your right to own a gun! Stop reading for a minute and think about that statement and make a list of all the things that you might question if you have functional critical thinking skills.
Here are a few of my critical thinking questions. How did these violent drug criminals get into the country? Are they here illegally? Does that make them illegal immigrants? Would their children be eligible for in-state college tuition under the Dream Act if they stay here long enough? If a policeman or border patrol agent shot one of these illegal immigrant, assault weapon owning drug dealers in the backside who would end up in prison?
239 is a very exact number which makes me think that some very exacting police and DEA work has been done to arrive at this number. What are the 239 cities? Wouldn’t these drug cartel guys sort of stand out in Provo, Utah (207th largest city in the US) or in Olathe, Kansas, (206th largest city in the US). Are they only operating in those cities? Do we know who any of these people are? If we know they are here and we know who they are, why don’t we arrest them? Are they working only with other illegal immigrants or are there American citizens involved. Why aren’t they under arrest? I could go on, but I think you get the idea. There have been a number of our laws broken already but if we could just ban these assault weapons all these other laws could somehow be enforced.
Ms. Lowey further stated that these drug kingpins. “…come here and buy weapons to take back across the border. There are 200 gun dealers near the border making a fortune.”
Do the drug dealers come in and fill out lawfully mandated paperwork? How do they get the guns back across the border? Would enforcement of our existing border laws make this harder? Are they using fake IDs? Who are the dealers they are buying the weapons from? If we know these 200 gun dealers are selling weapons illegally to drug dealers, why don’t the police arrest them? Why doesn’t the Obama Administration pull their dealer licenses and impound their inventory while we investigate who they are selling guns to? Don’t gun dealers have to keep records about who they sell to? Are all of these laws being followed?
The philosophy of this administration is grounded in that old Saul Alinsky “Rules for Radicals” philosophy to not let a crisis go wasted. Why let a little drug war go to waste when there’s a chance to limit Second Amendment rights? ...
Finally, the Arizona Republic reports on the Mexican government's proclivity to blame America for it's problems:
MEXICO CITY - There is one gun store in Mexico. And it serves a very select clientele.
The store is run by the Mexican army and occupies two rooms in a heavily guarded building near the army's headquarters in Mexico City.
To shop here, customers need a permit that can take months to get. And once they buy a gun, there are limits on how much ammunition they can buy each month, where they can take the gun, who they can sell it to.
To shoppers here, the irony is clear: Mexico has some of the toughest gun-control laws in the world, yet the country's drug cartels are armed to the teeth with high-powered illegal weapons because guns are so easy to buy in the United States and smuggle over the border.
"If the United States had a system like ours, we wouldn't have so many problems here in Mexico," Agustin Villordo, 27, of Puebla, Mexico, said Tuesday as he shopped for a hunting rifle.
On Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will visit Mexico to discuss ways to stop gun smuggling. The meeting is part of an effort by the United States to help Mexico in an increasingly bloody war against the drug cartels. More than 6,300 people have died in the violence since 2006.
But Mexicans say little will change as long as the United States continues to make it easy to buy guns.
"It is necessary to reduce the sale of weapons, particularly of high-power weapons, in the United States," President Felipe Calderón said during a visit to Britain on Monday.
He said there was a "correlation" between Mexico's soaring drug violence and the end of the U.S. ban on sales of assault-style weapons. That ban, which expired in 2004, barred sales of semi-automatic rifles with certain combinations of military-style features, such as folding stocks, large magazines or flash suppressors. ...
The article also has this summary of Mexican gun laws:
In most U.S. states, citizens can buy as many guns as they want after filling out a form and submitting to a five-minute check of their criminal history against a federal database of police records. Sales between individual owners often require no background checks or paperwork at all.
In Mexico, the rules on civilian gun sales are much stricter:
• Owners must get a permit from the Mexican army. They must show they need a gun and demonstrate that they make "an honest living." The simplest permits take about eight days to process.
• Permission to carry a weapon requires a medical and psychological exam, as well as an exhaustive background check. Processing time is four to eight months, and the permit must be renewed annually.
• Guns can be bought at only one place: the National Defense Secretariat in Mexico City. Customers can own a total of 10 guns but only two handguns.
• Guns are registered by the military. Handguns sold under a "home defense" permit must not leave the owner's home. If the owner moves, he or she must update the gun registry. If the gun is sold, the sale must be approved by the military and the gun must change hands at the army headquarters in Mexico City.
• Gun owners can buy ammunition only for guns that they own. They are limited to a certain amount of bullets: 200 rounds every six months for a high-powered weapon, 500 rounds a month for a .22-caliber pistol.
So, all those gun control laws and violent criminals still won't obey the law. So, according to the anti-gunners' mentally impaired thinking (and I use that term loosely), the answer must be ... more gun control! Sigh.
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