Loopholes let gun smuggling to Mexico flourish

[tony hipchest]

Federal tracking system is crafted to protect Second Amendment rights

Excellent (but very long) article detailing the ease and precision these gun smugglers are obtaining guns and getting them across the boarder.

very cool video about Juarez (now considered one of the deadliest cities in the world) and its cartels in the link. warning: very graphic images of wasted bodies lying around in broad daylight.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30217992/

HOUSTON - In July 2006, John Phillip Hernandez, a 24-year-old unemployed machinist who lived with his parents, walked into a giant sporting goods store here and plunked $2,600 in cash on a glass display counter. A few minutes later, Mr. Hernandez walked out with three military-style rifles.

One of those rifles was recovered seven months later in Acapulco, Mexico, where it had been used by drug cartel gunmen to attack the offices of the Guerrero State attorney general, court documents say. Four police officers and three secretaries were killed.

Although Mr. Hernandez was arrested last year as part of a gun-smuggling ring, most of the 22 others in the ring are still at large. Before their operation was discovered, the smugglers had managed to transport what court documents described as at least 339 high-powered weapons to Mexico over a year and a half, federal agents said.

“There is no telling how long that group was operating before we caught on to them,” said J. Dewey Webb, the agent in charge of the Houston division of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Noting there are about 1,500 licensed gun dealers in the Houston area, he added: “You can come to Houston and go to a different gun store every day for several months and never alert any one.”

Evading detection
The case highlights a major obstacle facing the United States as it tries to meet a demand from Mexico to curb the flow of arms from the states to drug cartels. The federal system for tracking gun sales, crafted over the years to avoid infringements on Second Amendment rights, makes it difficult to quickly spot suspicious trends and to identify people buying for smugglers, law enforcement officials say.

As a result, in some states along the Southwest border where firearms are lightly regulated, gun smugglers can evade detection for months or years. In Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, dealers can sell an unlimited number of rifles to anyone with a driver’s license and a clean criminal record without reporting the sales to the government. At gun shows in these states, there is even less regulation. Private sellers, unlike licensed dealers, are not obligated to record the buyer’s name, much less report the sale to the A.T.F.

Mexican officials are desperate for America to clamp down on the flow of weapons that has kept drug cartels well-armed. Sending straw purchasers into American stores, cartels have stocked up on semi-automatic AK-47 and AR-15 rifles, converting some to machine guns, investigators in both countries say. They have also bought .50 caliber rifles capable of stopping a car and Belgian pistols able to fire rifle rounds that will penetrate body armor.


Federal agents say about 90 percent of the 12,000 pistols and rifles the Mexican authorities recovered from drug dealers last year and asked to be traced came from dealers in the United States, most of them in Texas and Arizona. The Mexican foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa, in talking with reporters recently, accused the United States of violating its international treaty obligations by allowing guns to flow into the hands of organized crime groups in Mexico.

But law enforcement officials on this side of the border say the legal hurdles to making cases against smugglers remain high. “Guns are legal to possess in this country,” said William J. Hoover, the assistant director for operations of the federal firearms agency. “If you stop me between the dealer and the border, I am still legal, because I can possess those guns."

[xfl2001fan]

Wow...I can see where this is kind of a touchy situation...what is Mexico doing to protect itself from having these types of items go into the country though? I mean, if they had a better border patrol...

[steelreserve]

I don't know exactly how they are proposing to fix this. Do they think we should make Texas be like California, where even mentioning that you own a gun will cause the same reaction in people as if you'd told them you have two dicks? Somehow, I don't think that's too likely.

[tony hipchest]

Originally Posted by xfl2001fan

Wow...I can see where this is kind of a touchy situation...what is Mexico doing to protect itself from having these types of items go into the country though? I mean, if they had a better border patrol...

thats the thing. the cartels own the boarder patrol. they own the cops, the judges, they infiltrate the military.

drug money rules. those who try to stop it are slaughtered. (see- youtube... thread)

[Dino 6 Rings]

90% of the Guns in Mexico are NOT from the United States.

90% of the Guns in Mexico that are Tracable are from the United States (Most sold by the Mexican Military to the Cartels) 17% of the Guns are actual US Made guns.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elec...umber-claimed/

The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.

"These kinds of guns -- the auto versions of these guns -- they are not coming from El Paso," he said. "They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don't get these guns from the U.S."

I am not a Fan of Biased reporting that is Agenda Driven.

The Agenda being to Disarm the Citizens of the United States that Legally Obtain weapons and never commit a crime with them.

[Preacher]

Originally Posted by tony hipchest

thats the thing. the cartels own the boarder patrol. they own the cops, the judges, they infiltrate the military.

drug money rules. those who try to stop it are slaughtered. (see- youtube... thread)

Which is why I go back to exempting the military from posse-comitatus within a certain mileage of the border.. say, 5 miles of any US, Mexican border. Let the Spec. Forces do some "training" there.

After all, Force Recon, Green Beret's, Navy Seals, and the Air force's SOFs need to keep themselves up to date in live fire situations don't they?

[tony hipchest]

Originally Posted by Dino 6 Rings

90% of the Guns in Mexico are NOT from the United States.



I am not a Fan of Biased reporting that is Agenda Driven.

The Agenda being to Disarm the Citizens of the United States that Legally Obtain weapons and never commit a crime with them.

i am not a fan of the lack of reading comprehension and people being driven blind by radical propoganda and rhetoric.

lets try this again...

Federal agents say about 90 percent of the 12,000 pistols and rifles the Mexican authorities recovered from drug dealers last year and asked to be traced came from dealers in the United States, most of them in Texas and Arizona.

[Crushzilla]

Originally Posted by Dino 6 Rings

90% of the Guns in Mexico are NOT from the United States.

90% of the Guns in Mexico that are Tracable are from the United States (Most sold by the Mexican Military to the Cartels) 17% of the Guns are actual US Made guns.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elec...umber-claimed/

The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.

"These kinds of guns -- the auto versions of these guns -- they are not coming from El Paso," he said. "They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don't get these guns from the U.S."

I am not a Fan of Biased reporting that is Agenda Driven.

The Agenda being to Disarm the Citizens of the United States that Legally Obtain weapons and never commit a crime with them.

This is from that FoxNews article.

In fact, it's not even close. The fact is, only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S.

What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, "is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S."

But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.

"Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market," Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.

So... the 17% statistic is a bit misleading, as well.

[xfl2001fan]

At the end of the day, is it really our job to take care of the Mexicans? I don't want to sound like a sole-nationalist here...but if the rest of the world is really so upset over America...let's just pull the great majority of our troops back to become our own personalized border patrol. Nobody in or out...

[Crushzilla]

Originally Posted by xfl2001fan

At the end of the day, is it really our job to take care of the Mexicans? I don't want to sound like a sole-nationalist here...but if the rest of the world is really so upset over America...let's just pull the great majority of our troops back to become our own personalized border patrol. Nobody in or out...

No, I agree.

It is a problem; such drastic enforcement of the border would only make matters worse.