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A US Congressional report suggests some 70% of firearms recovered from Mexican crime scenes in 2009 and 2010 and submitted for tracing came from the US.

The report indicates Mexican drug cartels are arming themselves with US military-style weapons.

The senators who compiled the report urge a strengthening of US regulations to stem the flow of guns to Mexico.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has repeatedly called for the US to implement stricter firearms laws.

The report, Halting US Firearms Trafficking to Mexico, by Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein (California), Charles Schumer (New York) and Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island) says US guns have contributed to "Mexico's dangerous levels of violence".

It quotes Acting Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Kenneth Melson stating that of the 29,284 firearms recovered in Mexico in 2009 and 2010 and submitted for tracing, 20,504 came from the United States.

The report recommends a number of measures to curb firearms trafficking, including:

- Congress pass legislation requiring background checks for all firearms purchases, including those at gun shows
- The ATF tighten existing laws to make the import of military-style weapons from the former Eastern bloc harder
- Sellers report multiple sales of all firearms in order to allow law enforcement agents to track all bulk buying of firearms
- Access be expanded to the ATF's firearms tracing system so that the backlog in tracing of seized weapons can be tackled

The senators accuse the US Congress of having been "virtually moribund" while Mexican drug gangs snap up US military-style guns.

Their report comes a day after President Calderon accused the US arms industry of causing thousands of deaths in Mexico.

"Why does this arms business continue?" he asked.

"I say it openly: it's because of the profit which the US arms industry makes," he added.

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From what I've read about this issue, it has actually been the US/BATFE FORCING gun-dealers to send illegal weapons into Mexico.

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More likely, these cartels have agreements with wholesale distributors from other countries.

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Do US blades fuel Mexican beheadings?

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Reporters? Just walking up and asking cops/cartels? Are we talking Mexican reporters or American ones? Because both are likely to be kidnapped and ransomed, if they were stupid enough to do that.

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The allegation the ATF knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them into Mexico is "false," according to Assistant Attorney General Ronald Welch.

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Notice who authored this report, Sen. Feinstein, Schumer, and Whitehouse, just about the most anti-gun folks in Congress.

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They're playing with the numbers to push for more domestic gun control that'll do little to stop the Cartels from getting more arms.

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I do like how the lead-in picture of the report shows grenades and greande launchers

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Originally posted by SkyDiveLife:

kpo:

From what I've read about this issue, it has actually been the US/BATFE FORCING gun-dealers to send illegal weapons into Mexico.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20070896-10391695.html

I believe that the operations by the BATFE were called, "Project: Gunwalker" and "Operation: Fast and Furious".

Some have suggested that these operations were meant to be used as "proof" that more gun control should be enacted.

To, essentially trick people into support for more gun-control in the US.

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Originally posted by SkyDiveLife:
FremdFrima wrote: "We sell, or even outright give, military grade arms to our pet pro-fascist punks all over the world.

They sell some percentage of em to the cartels, those which are not themselves members of the cartels in the first damn place.
(See Also: Noriega, et. al.)

The cartels arm their goons with em.

Pretty Fucking Obvious, really."

I am really having a hard time believing that the cartels are using weapons we supplied to the Afghanis, who then turned around and sold it to the Colombians and the Mexicans.

Most of the weapons I've seen/heard taken from third-world massacres were of the AK-type.

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In the U.S., just in case people were wondering, we can only get semi-automatic rifles for civilian use. Not full automatic.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Frem's explanation is more comprehensive and covers more kinds of situations. I neglected to mention regimes themselves. Go with his.

AK-47s are common because Russia secretly has ties to Iran and Syria, which were supplying to insurgents headed into Iraq, and some of those AK-47s in Afghanistan are holdovers from the old war with Russia. But there are many other better and more modern equipped forces out there, most of them in direct service to the regimes in power. Because those regimes in power have money with which to buy.

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Aw fucking hell - have any of y'all even *BEEN* to a gun show lately ?

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(3) See also: http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2007/10/09/hk-because-you-suck-and-w
e-hate-you/
(Fair warning this time: Don't be drinkin something when you read that!)

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Originally posted by kpo:
I don't suppose you can back up either of those two claims?

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Originally posted by Geezer:

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Originally posted by kpo:
I don't suppose you can back up either of those two claims?

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Just got a minute, but...

It's really in the things they don't say in their stats. "Guns obtained from the U.S.", for example. Is that bought here, made here, shipped through here at some point? And "X percent of guns sent by Mexico to the U.S. for tracing..." Did they only send guns manufactured in the U.S.? That'd make it pretty likely they were "obtained" from the U.S. in some way. Who knows?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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The means such drills employ are incompatible with that goal, since the standard template is based on the "Lockdown" Scenario: The killers conduct the rampage on their own terms, end it at a time of their choosing, and the SWAT team merely cattle-pens the victims.

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...that's as silly as asking Gus to *not* act like a damn platoon sergeant - I like to joke he oughta just have the stripes tattoed on, since despite being discharged long ago he's got the voice, posture, walk, attitude, etc, to where he can't POSSIBLY be mistaken for anything else.

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
Just goes to show how much you can muck up their training once you know how they work, and what they respond to!

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Originally posted by Geezer:

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Originally posted by kpo:
I don't suppose you can back up either of those two claims?

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Just got a minute, but...

It's really in the things they don't say in their stats. "Guns obtained from the U.S.", for example. Is that bought here, made here, shipped through here at some point? And "X percent of guns sent by Mexico to the U.S. for tracing..." Did they only send guns manufactured in the U.S.? That'd make it pretty likely they were "obtained" from the U.S. in some way. Who knows?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Originally posted by SkyDiveLife:
kpo:

I really, REALLY, don't want to get all conspiracy-thorist on this, but I just might have to.

I believe that the BATFE, and the current administration, were allowing these guns to "walk" over into Mexico in the belief that they could then use it as an exscuse to implement even more gun-control in America.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
No need to, lemme break it down into the dead-bang simple.

IF - Gun show dealers are selling arms wholesale to the cartels.

AND - There's undercover Feds crawling all over these gun shows like fleas on a hound.

THEN - Why have they not caught a single one ?

Res Ipsa Loquitur!

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Originally posted by Hardware:
Let's look at it another way. I'm a cartel drug lord. I've got a king size bed stuffed with money for a mattress. Am I going to;

A) Send mules to US gun shops one at a time to buy a couple of rifles and maybe one handgun (semi-automatic only!) at a time. Then have those mules smuggle those guns south of the border to help me wage a drug war against other cartel members.

OR

B) Meet with a broker from South America or Asia who can sell me all the full automatic rifles, machine guns, sub-machine guns, RPGs, and grenades I can use.

Hmm, let me think...

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Originally posted by kpo:
But you have to SHOW where the report is flawed, rather than just speculating what they might've done wrong. I'm not saying your suspicions aren't valid, but you haven't discredited the report just by voicing them.

Maybe the submission for tracing was done randomly on purpose. As you say, who knows? Isn't there any analysis out there (and I'm not saying there isn't) criticising the way the report's findings were calculated?

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MEXICO CITY – The most fearsome weapons wielded by Mexico’s drug cartels enter the country from Central America, not the United States, according to U.S. diplomatic cables disseminated by WikiLeaks and published on Tuesday by La Jornada newspaper.

Items such as grenades and rocket-launchers are stolen from Central American armies and smuggled into Mexico via neighboring Guatemala, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City reported to Washington.

The assertions appear in embassy cables written after three bilateral conferences on arms trafficking that took place between March 2009 and January 2010 in Cuernavaca, Mexico; Phoenix; and Tapachula, Mexico, respectively.

The cables’ authors note that Mexican officials and politicians never hesitate to remind U.S. diplomats that Mexico’s drug war – which has claimed 35,000 lives in the last four years – is fueled by Americans’ demand for illegal drugs and by guns bought in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Yet one of the cables maintains that 90 percent of the heavy armament Mexican security forces seize from cartel gunmen comes from Central America.

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One of the things I noticed is that the Mexican government sent less than 25% of the guns they seized to ATF for tracing (page 16). This gives the Mexican government a great chance to skew the figures to support their claim that it's mostly American guns, by sending U.S. manufactured guns for tracing. The GAO waffles a bit but does not question that Mexico might be loading the sample with U.S. guns.

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Also, consider that the Mexican government and a good chunk of the U.S. government want to show that the weapons are coming from the U.S.: Mexico to deflect blame for their fialure to internally stop the cartels,

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
No need to, lemme break it down into the dead-bang simple.

IF - Gun show dealers are selling arms wholesale to the cartels.

AND - There's undercover Feds crawling all over these gun shows like fleas on a hound.

THEN - Why have they not caught a single one ?

Res Ipsa Loquitur!

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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As described in United States v. Howell, 37 F.3d 1197, 1204 (1994), the defense "applies when, acting with actual or apparent authority, a government official affirmatively assures the defendant that certain conduct is legal and the defendant reasonably believes that official."

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