Press release from the Arms Control Association . . .

Mexico’s foreign minister, Mr. Marcelo Ebrard, and the government of Mexico were selected as the 2021 Arms Control Persons of the Year through an online poll that drew thousands of participants from dozens of countries. The annual contest is organized by the independent, nongovernmental Arms Control Association.

Mr. Ebrard and the government were nominated for their lawsuit against U.S. gun manufacturers and distributors that takes a novel approach to combat illicit weapons trafficking from the United States into Mexico that is fueling violence and criminal activity.

The lawsuit, filed in a Massachusetts federal district court, alleges that several major firearms manufacturers and wholesalers “design, market, distribute, and sell guns in ways they know routinely arm the drug cartels in Mexico,” and that contributes to a decline of life expectancy in Mexico. It said the named companies sell about 340,000 of an estimated half-million guns that illegally flow each year from “Massachusetts and other U.S. states to criminals south of the [U.S.-Mexico] border.”

“The Mexican Foreign Ministry’s lawsuit against the U.S. firearms companies represents an important new way to hold rogue actors accountable for their role in the violence caused by small arms trafficking across international borders,” according to Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

“The Arms Control Person(s) of the Year contest is a reminder of the diverse and creative ways that dedicated individuals and organizations from around the globe can contribute to meeting the difficult arms control challenges of today and the coming decades,” he said.

This year, eight individuals and groups were nominated by the Arms Control Association staff and board of directors. “All of the nominees demonstrated extraordinary leadership in raising awareness of and advancing effective arms control solutions for the threats posed by mass casualty weapons during the course of 2021,” Kimball said.

The runners-up in this year’s contest were Sébastien Philippe, an associate research scholar of the Princeton Program on Science and Global Security, and French journalist Tomas Statius, for their groundbreaking investigation that challenges the French government’s official public story of the health consequences of French atmospheric nuclear tests in the South Pacific. Their new findings suggest more than 100,000 people in Polynesia may be eligible to claim compensation from France for harm caused by the tests, which is about 10 times more than estimated by the existing French government.

Online voting was open from Dec. 8, 2021, until Jan. 12, 2022. A list of all of this year’s nominees is available at https://www.armscontrol.org/pressroom/2021-12/2021-arms-control-persons-year-nominees-announced

Previous winners of the Arms Control Person of the Year are:

  • Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins and Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security for catalyzing support and action from leaders and practitioners in the national security and foreign policy communities to increase diversity into their ranks (2020);
  • Areg Danagoulian and colleagues at MIT for development of an innovative new nuclear disarmament verification process using neutron beams (2019);
  • 4,000 Anonymous Google Employees whose open letter to company leadership led to Google ending its work on “Project Maven” with the Pentagon (2018);
  • Diplomats from Austria, Brazil, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, and South Africa, and Costa Rica who secured the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (2017) ;
  • Tony de Brum and the government of the Marshall Islands (2016);
  • Setsuko Thurlow and the Hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, (2015);
  • Austria’s Director for Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Ambassador Alexander Kmentt (2014);
  • Executive-Secretary of the CTBTO Lassina Zerbo (2013);
  • General James Cartwright (2012);
  • Reporter and activist Kathi Lynn Austin (2011);
  • Kazakhstan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kairat Umarov and Thomas D’Agostino, U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator (2010);
  • Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) (2009);
  • Norway’s Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and his ministry’s Director-General for Security Policy and the High North Steffen Kongstad (2008); and
  • Congressmen Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.) and David Hobson (R-Ohio) (2007).

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

25 COMMENTS

  1. Man. The stupid, it just burns.

    RPG’s do not come from the US and the cartels have these. Full auto AKM’s do not come from the US but the cartels have them. What about those drug smuggling submarines?

    • And grenades are not exactly available at your local gun shop. At the price of a destructive device tax stamp they are a very expensive one use item.

    • The fully-automatic versions of the M4, the M240, the M249, and the Mk19 grenade launcher DO come from the US, and the cartels DO have them, but, alas, your local Texas, Arizona, or New Mexico retail gun emporium does not stock these for routine over-the-counter sale. Sadly, one must go through the US government, and then the Mexican government, to obtain these guns, but only if one is a cartel member in good standing. Prices are VERY reasonable, I’m told. . . they’re so cheap, it’s as if the guns simply walk out of government inventory!

  3. That’s all fine and dandy.
    Noticed they’re keeping pretty close track of nuclear goings on.
    I’ve give up on my PerpetualFusionNuetrinoBlomb project, couldn’t keep the damned neutrinos in the box.
    Now Im just waiting for global warming to raise the sea levels so the gubment dont catch me stealing salt water for my planned invasion of the Planet Slug.
    Mexico loses 30% of the gunms it buys. Not, they know where there at.

    • Au contraire! Motion Picture Industry people are not useless; They provide a good, bad example for the rest of us not to follow.

  7. Mexico hasn’t lost a damn thing. Anyone would be a moron not to know they’re being sold on the black market.

    • Probably purchased by the American taxpayer, sold by various-level Mexican bureaucrats to an assortment of bad actors from all over.

  8. Next year somebody needs to nominate “Omni Consumer Products” the fictitious mega-corporation from Robocop.

  10. Sounds like Mexico needs better and more honest border agents…and cops…and military…and politicians…

  11. They have it exactly backwards.

    It is not the guns fueling the illegal criminal murderous gangsters.

    It is the murderous thugs fueling the illegal criminal gun trade.

    Understand the difference. Inanimate objects do not generate human behaviors. People generate human behaviors.

    Always, every time, in all scenarios, it is the people doing things, not the objects they hold in their hands.

    • Nope. Its gunms without them everything would be just fine. Gunms is the reason the bunk commercial weed I buy from Mexico ain’t worth a sht. Yep, it’s the gunms

    • You have to understand the liberal mindset. Guns are bad and criminals are victims of circumstances. The end.

  12. Yeah, ok, sure. It’s not like Mexican law enforcement and government is famously corrupt and selling their guns to criminal cartels, no… that wouldn’t happen. They definitely just “lost” all these weapons. And clearly the solution is to ban handguns and AR-15s from American private ownership. That’ll solve the problem! /sarc

    • My GOD, Man, that’s so crazy it just might work! If. . . we ban. . . handguns. . . and AR-15s. . . from. . . American private ownership, then. . . instantly, Mexican drug cartels. . will not be able. . . to get US-made fully-automatic weapons via the Mexican government! That’s AMAZING!

      I concur with your /sarc, Sir. Well played.

      However, fools on the Left actually BELIEVE this stuff–Magical Thinking, and all that.

  13. Of course he got an award. Getting an award in today’s upside-down world is not a badge of honor. Like getting a Nobel Peace Prize – in the 21st century given out only to terrorists.

  14. Awards like these, including the Nobel prize, are given by “people” who form groups with the idea their contrived lofty ideals set them apart from and transcend the insignificant lives of us mere mortals therefore all crimes and sins of the award receipant don’t matter.

  15. This is what happens when you have Leftist-Socialist running things. Corruption runs deep.

Comments are closed.