The liberal editors of the New York Times and the Mayors Against Illegal Guns could care less about the gun violence in Mexico. The below New York Times editorial and the efforts of Bloomberg and his fellow mayors are really designed to infringe on the Second Amendment rights of American gun owners. If the Times and the anti-gun mayors, like Bloomberg of NY, Daley of Chicago, and Menino of Boston had their way, only our police and military would be allowed to possess any hand guns and military-style rifles.
The figure thrown around by Mexican and American government officials that 80-90 percent of cartel guns come from the U.S. is a bunch of crap. Mexican officials, the ATF and FBI connive to make it appear that 80-90 percent of the cartel guns come from the U.S.
From my previous blogs, here is what FactCheck revealed about the alleged distribution of those drug cartel guns:
__That 90 percent figure has been repeated many times, but FactCheck.org says it's bogus: "The figure represents only the percentage of crime guns that have been submitted by Mexican officials and traced by U.S. officials. ... U.S. and Mexican officials both say that Mexico recovers more guns than it submits for tracing ... " And FactCheck says Mexico only submits those guns it already has reason to believe came from the United States.
From those same blogs, here is what Joan Schaan’s study showed about the alleged distribution:
__Joan Neuhaus Schaan, a fellow for Homeland Security and Terrorism programs in the prestigious James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, has exposed the Obama administration for throwing out phony statistics on the drug cartel guns. Her research revealed that of the weapons acquired by Mexican drug cartels, only 20-25 percent come from the United States. The remaining 75-80 percent are believed to come from Asia, Europe, South America and the Soviet bloc states. Schaan believes that to the extent U.S. military weapons have been found, they have most likely been sold to or provided by the U.S. government to another government and subsequently diverted.
Whenever the Mexicans seize a cache of weapons they cull out the ones that can be traced back to the U.S. and with the connivance of the ATF and FBI declare that 80-90 percent of the guns originated in the U.S. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mexican drug cartels receive most of their weapons from south of the Mexican border, not the northern border, and from foreign (not U.S.) arms dealers.
From the December 27 issue of Borderland Beat:
AT LAST, A BORDER CRACKDOWN
The New York Times
EDITORIAL
After nearly two years of foot-dragging while the death toll in the Mexican drug wars rose beyond 30,000, the Obama administration is finally stepping up the fight against the easy movement of illegal guns across the United States’ border with Mexico and into the hands of violent drug cartels.
This has long been an open scandal. An analysis of government gun-trace data by the coalition Mayors Against Illegal Guns found that many thousands of guns recovered from Mexican crime scenes and traced between 2006 and 2009 were originally sold by American gun dealers. According to a recent investigation by The Washington Post, eight of the top 10 dealers in Mexican crime guns have shops near the border.
To stem this deadly flow, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is seeking emergency authority to require gun dealers near the border to report multiple purchases of the high-firepower rifles favored by cartel gunmen.
The White House Office of Management and Budget, which must sign off on the A.T.F. plan, should promptly do so. The new reporting requirement, while not a solution, is an important step. It will make it easier to identify and prosecute gun traffickers and, potentially, deter multiple sales using straw purchasers.
All gun dealers already have to report multiple handgun sales to federal authorities. The new rule would extend that requirement to AK-47’s and other battlefield assault rifles. The cartels have shown an increasing preference for high-capacity rifles like these.
Mayors Against Illegal Guns, led by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston, urged the Obama administration to create such an initiative more than a year ago. Until now, the White House has ducked the issue, presumably to help the prospects of those Democrats with top ratings from the National Rifle Association. But this has not helped to stop the traffic.
The N.R.A. is predictably opposed to the initiative. The administration must hold its ground and, beginning in January, press the next Congress to remove statutory limitations hampering the A.T.F.’s ability to shut down irresponsible dealers near the border and elsewhere.
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