I suppose it’s human nature. Why wouldn’t the media focus on comely killers rather than the garden variety gun-toting cartel members who’ve raped, tortured and slaughtered thousands of their compatriots? In the same way, we’re getting a new spate of articles about Mexican gun smuggling rather than anything about U.S. government sales to the Mexican Army and police (which seep to the cartels). Check this from azstarnet.com . . .
As many as 120,000 people have been violently killed since 2006 in Mexico and about half of them were organized-style homicides that often involved the use of high-powered firearms imported illegally from the United States, according to a study from the University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute and the Igarape Institute, a research center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Hey, anyone remember Fast and Furious? You know; the scandal wherein the ATF enabled the sale of over 2000 U.S. gun store guns to members of the Sinaloa cartel, one of which a rip crew used to murder U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. At the time Uncle Sam was busy trying to convince Americans that lax U.S. gun laws armed Mexican drug thugs.
Would those guns count as legal or illegal? Anyway, what goes around comes around. Or, if you prefer, we’re seeing more of the same old you-know-what in a more recent wrapper. To wit:
It’s not known exactly how many firearms are smuggled into Mexico from the United States each year, but Nogales, Sonora, municipal President Ramón Guzmán said it’s a lot easier to purchase firearms in the United States than it is in Mexico.
The Mexican military estimates that less than 1 percent of firearms in Mexico are legally registered and 90 percent of firearms are used for criminal purposes.
The likelihood that many of the guns seized by Chief Novoa’s officers come from the United States is very high, he said, due to the city’s proximity to the United States.
About 87 percent of firearms seized by Mexican authorities and traced in the last five years originated in the United States, a Government Accountability Office report found in 2009.
Many of the firearms come from gun shops and shows in Southwest border states.
“More gun control will help us in every type of crime, from vehicle theft to homicides. Even our own cops get killed with these same weapons.”
Reality check time. Once again, the GAO guns represent a small fraction of all the guns confiscated by the Mexican authorities. But they are all the guns they submitted for ATF trace. Do the Mexicans submit guns with “Property of the Mexican Army” or “Property of the Mexican Police” etched on the side? No.
According to elpasotimes.com, we’re talking about 68,161 recovered firearms. Here’s an idea: how about the Mexican or American government give us a list of the make, model and serial number for all of Mexico’s confiscated guns? The information was available before Fast and Furious. It would tell us exactly how many guns came from where.
Needless to say, there’s a reason why the Obama Administration isn’t forthcoming on the true origin of these firearms or, equally, the numbers of firearms exported legally to police and military south of the border.
How much of the Merida Initiative’s $1.1 billion (since 2008) for “counterdrug activities” was spent on exporting US-made small arms? Especially the AR15/M16/M4 platform now seen everywhere in Mexico. How many guns have we sent to Mexico legally? Knowing that over 100k troops defected to the cartels.
It’s an important question, given that the Obama Administration is working with the U.N. to create an arms treaty that would establish protocols to track the legal shipment of arms around the globe.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the Obama administration that wants to ban military-style rifles (and high capacity magazines) from the public at the same time it’s shipping actual military rifles into a country where tens of thousands of guns “go walkies” (a.k.a., seep) to narco-terrorists.
But the media continues to parrot the government’s line: our gun laws are their problem. Go figure.
wonder if CBS will puti Sharl Atkinson on this story.
Note Katie Pavlich got CPAC bogger of thr year for her work.
Mucho kudos to Robert here @ TTAG
and Mike Vanderboer @ SipseyStreet.
“Arm criminals (in a failed narco-terror state), not citizens” is the Obama credo. It’s quite literally something he should be hanged by the neck until dead for, yet nothing happens.
I love how the Mexicans think to tell us how to run our country.
THEY fucked up THEIR OWN country, and want to blame someone for it. Bah, to hell with them all, let ’em rot.
OUR gun laws are the problem?! No, most of Mexico’s problems were caused by MEXICO.
OUR laws are the problem?
Nope, I believe MEXICO’S laws are the problem.
Our “War on (some) Drugs” is largely to blame. Legalizing drugs and allowing pharmaceutical companies to sell medicinal grade drugs on the free and open market would gut the cartels. When was the last time you saw a couple of beer distributors fighting over turf?
Prohibition comes to mind. As much as I hate the idea of legalizing drugs, you have a point.
why do you hate the idea of legalizing drugs? if people want to ride a mountain bike down a dangerous hillside for a “rush” and kill themselves no one really cares… so they are chasing an imaginary dragon instead who cares? if you cant make good choices about what to put in your body, you shouldnt be allowed to ride mountain bike. nature used to kill off alot of stupid people. modern soceity is seriously inhibiting natural selection to do its job.
our rotten government is the problem. we need to stop “helping” them.
Ah yes… Arm one narco-terror group so they can fight another… works very well IF you ignore that as soon as they get the arms, everybody is a target, not just their competition as these so called “operation leaders” want the world to believe. (I have to question if they all believe it will give the desired results, or as more than likely, they don’t really care because they want mayhem in the streets and more power.
by the way, perhaps I missed it, but what does a video about cartels recruiting more women into their organizations have to do with B.O. and Withholding arming them?
Obama, Holder, et al., should avoid too much enthusiasm about a U.N. treaty on small arms trafficking. If there are criminal penalties in it, they could easily find themselves in the dock.
So, let’s just assume it’s … well, … a helluva lot.
Let’s make a trade. Give us all those unwanted American guns back and we will give you back all these unwanted illegal immigrants.
im willing to make a deal.
Best idea I’ve heard in a while.
Seems fair to me.
I guess I’m going against the grain here, but remember all the narco terrorism is competition to sell weed, cocaine, etc to Americans. Our Almighty Bucks are what’s keeping this going. Didn’t catch the connection between female terrorists and Obama, but then I’m just a country nurse, not a starship captain.
And I don’t see American’s illegally crossing the border to Mexico because its sooooooo much safer there because of their safe gun laws.
The reason we don’t know the whole number of guns or their identifying info is because the Mexican government wants a convenient scape goat. The past president Calderon was famous for seeking more gun control on the US border, but was strangely silent as to how so many fully automatic weapons and grenades were being used in the drug wars. Mexico is an incredibly corrupt culture in which everyone is suspect, the polcie from the lowest to the highest, the military, the government, businessmen. If the drug business is not enough, they have a huge kidnapping problem. When was the last time you heard of a kidnapping for ransome in the US? It’s like having our own little Somalia on our border.
How much more of the “war on [some] drugs” can either nation take?
That communists have been supplying military weapons of every kind to South America and Central America for the last 50 years, makes no never-mind? Nope, the U.S. is the problem.
Just spitballin’ here, but maybe we shouldn’t listen to the most corrupt government in this hemisphere tell us about how we need more restrictive gun laws. And we shouldn’t listen to what Mexico tells us, either.
Good points. Nothing happens or is attempted in Mexico without bribery (la mordida). Anything they ask or tell us has bribery involved. It’s just the way of life they choose.
And we’ve been supplying a whole educational system (School of the Americas) for torturers who are on “our side” for over 60 years.
Not to mention materiel and ‘political/security/military advisors’. The steaming pile that is the last 50+ years of South and Central American nastiness was generated as much by the US as the USSR.
I’m not saying we’re to blame, just that it is a problem we very much helped to create.
we shouldn’t listen to the most corrupt government in this hemisphere tell us about how we need more restrictive gun laws. And we shouldn’t listen to what Mexico tells us, either.
I see what you did there.
Here’s a idea. Stop “helping” mexico and stop the war on drugs. were done, tired of it. Were sick of our own government (CIA and its surrogates) smuggling drugs into the United States, were sick of the SWAT teams kicking in doors and killing dogs over marijuana, were sick of the millions imprisoned for a health problem (addition is a healthy, spiritual, and personal problem, not a crime), were sick of washington telling us we cant smoke or consume plants that have been growing since we crawled out of the swamp (one of which is naturally produced in our brains in the case of DMT). God forbid, if myself or a loved one ever acquires a terminal illness, you can bet your rosy ass that marijuana will be the first treatment plan.
We’re (“we” as in us that have two neurons rubbing together) fed up. A little sequestration, government bankruptcy, and economic decline would be a damn good thing right now.
+1000
Word.
Too bad for Mexico that they and thir US surrogates lie La Raza wok so hard to keep the border porous to allow Mexico’s excess population easy access to the US.
I suggest third world countries responsibly start trying to control their population, for this is probably the reason for their poverty. They need to learn God’s Word, wisdom, laws.
this has nothing to do with god. science killed god. this has everything to do with mexico being jacked up and a gang running the country causing their people to flee for a better life. can you blame these people? no way give them a SS# so they can pay taxes and support the country with all of us. we hated africans, irish, asian, now mexican, let these people live.
We have done these people dirty for a long time. First we stole their lands. Two we then stole their water(Reclamation Bureau). We effed up all the southwest tribes that lived along the rivers, we give them “reservations”? Then we kill off their industry by passing NAFTA, where our big corporations benefit from cheap labour and the people suffer from lack of. So they migrate north to make a better life, and so now they are “wetbacks”. So then some down there in their desperation to exist start to supply our meth heads here in the USA a product that they want, and now again our government sends weapons down to the cartels so that more people are killed in the “WAR against drugs?” Made up again by the same poster boy Ronald Reagan who was also the poster boy for NAFTA? Our borders are wide open, our young men are dying in faraway foreign lands for what? Or should I say Who? It’s all a sham! They have you hating people that have done nothing to you. Your government is responsible for the majority of the evil in this world and you are too blind to see it. http://www.militaryindustrialcomplex.com/companies.asp
Wow! A personal note from B.B. King’s guitar!
youre actually right. i agree 100%.
thats why i get red faced when people blame the mexicans that immigrate to the US (even if they do it illegally).
Talk about blaming the victims.
Your comment reminds me of “the Shock Doctrine” (which should be mandatory reading) and the US economic sabotage of Haiti.
I would like to think that this is not the fault of American citizens, and that we are much more responsible with the use and sale of firearms. Our currently elected leaders on the other hand, have shown a disturbing trend of arming criminals and terrorist organizations around the globe with blatant disregard for both the law and human rights. But then who elected these people twice, of course it’s American citizens. We can rest assured that if we are facing certain death at the hands of armed criminals or terrorists, and ask for help repeatedly we will receive as much help from this administration as our citizens did in Benghazi, and if our leaders stay consistent in their response to American citizens in danger they will give the attackers better weaponry and more ammo.
one thing people need to remember is that the A.T.F. did not simply give these firearms straight to the cartel. they loosened up the gun control laws in border states so that people without proper paperwork, or background checks could purchase large firearms. this allowed the cartel to send out these “go walkies” with large sums of american cash and purchase firearms without the american citizen breaking the law. this is simple economics the man with the most money gets the stuff. if guns are unavailable in mexico than they will come here to buy them. with how much money the cartel has, it is no problem for the cartel to grossly overpay for the weapon and “pay off” the american citizens conscious. they know who bought the weapon and what it would be used for.
no the problem is not with the cartels violence or the fast and furious scandal, the problem is with american gun policy and who we allow to have guns. guns in this day and age should not be a common right. not everyone should be allowed to have guns by any means. the right to have guns should be tough to acquire and easy to lose. this meaning that the regulations in order to be able to own guns should be strict, much more than a weekend course for concealed carry, and should require multiple personality tests. the right to sell guns should be extremely hard to get because it is ultimately the person who sells the gun decides who gets guns. guns should also be easy to lose, and once the right to own guns has been lost it should be swiftly made sure that that person no longer has guns.
this is a complicated issue. and yes it was americas laws that were not very well planned that allowed this to happen. american gun policy always shoots itself in the foot.
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