Smuggler's Paradise: Guns, Drugs and Violence in the Southwest Part 1 of 2

[jpak]

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201102250023

The endless carnage of the Mexican cartel wars may seem a world away from the climate control and free Starbucks within the Phoenix Convention Center, where leading border security experts gathered this month for the fifth annual Border Security Expo. Yet it's only 150 miles from downtown Phoenix to the northernmost cartel war zone of Nogales, Sonora. Even closer are the badlands on the U.S. side of the border where last December a Border Patrol agent was killed in a firefight with Mexican drug smugglers. They were armed with AK-47s purchased legally from a gun store in Glendale, Arizona, less than a year before.

More than 73,000 firearms have been seized in drug raids or recovered from the scenes of cartel gun battles in Mexico since December 2006. According to law enforcement officials, "90 percent of the weapons that could be traced were determined to have originated from various sources within the U.S." Weapons sold over-the-counter in the U.S., including thousands of cheap, military-style assault rifles, are being used in Mexico to commit horrific violence on a massive scale.

Conservative politicians routinely demand that the federal government to do more to secure the border -- often championing nativist and draconian anti-immigrant policies. Yet they reflexively oppose even modest efforts by law enforcement better track the flow of high-powered weaponry.

Meanwhile, the violence in Mexico continues to escalate. More than 34,000 people have died in the cartel wars since late 2006, many of them law enforcement officers, elected officials, or innocent civilians. On February 15, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was shot and killed and his partner was seriously wounded while they were investigating cartel gunrunning in Mexico.

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[jpak]

1. Kicking for the truth

yup

[cognoscere]

3. To borrow a line from Steve Martin(I think it's his) you wouldn't

recognize the truth if it walked up to you and vomited on your shoes. Do you seriously believe that a cartel that has enough cash to fill your garage is going to send people around to buy guns one at a time from gun shows, gun stores, and other places at retail prices? Really? Because more likely than not, the cartel calls up some mideast arms dealer, orders a CONTAINER of AK47s, and has them delivered to wherever is convenient.

[jpak]

5. No - they buy them by the hundreds

Cartel Gunmen Buy American

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/opinion/16thurs4.html


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41257218/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

Federal officials say they have new evidence that Mexico's most violent drug cartels are exploiting U.S. guns laws to acquire massive quantities of assault rifles and other firearms for use in their war against the Mexican government.

In an early morning round-up in Arizona, law enforcement agents Tuesday arrested 20 people who are accused of illegally buying hundreds of AK-47s and other firearms at U.S. gun stores. The defendants allegedly acted as "straw purchasers," falsely declaring on federal forms they were purchasing the weapons for themselves, rather than their real clients: the Sinaloa Cartel and other Mexican drug trafficking organizations across the border, the officials said.

"The massive size of this operation exemplifies the magnitude of the problem — Mexican drug lords go shopping for war weapons in Arizona," said Dennis K. Burke, the U.S. attorney for Arizona, who announced the raids at a press conference in Phoenix.

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yup

[rl6214]

17. Allowed by our own government

YUP

YUP

YUP

[spin]

20. And the ATF may have helped the cartels smuggle perhaps 3000 weapons ...

into Mexico in an attempt to boost the statistics of American made weapons found in Mexico so as to push for another assault weapons ban.

I know you will just place your hands over your ears and yell, "NA, NA, NA, NA."

I suggest that you and others who oppose firearm ownership insist that our government investigate these charges. The charges are extremely serious and need to be resolved one way or the other. Surely even you would oppose such action by our government.

If a charge was made that the NRA helped smuggle 3000 guns into Mexico, you would be screaming your head off. And if such a charge was made I would be demanding to find our the truth.

[beevul]

22. I think thats an understanement.

"If a charge was made that the NRA helped smuggle 3000 guns into Mexico, you would be screaming your head off. And if such a charge was made I would be demanding to find our the truth."

If that charge was made by the same CBS reporter with the same degree of anonymity as the atf piece, there would be a thread here about it with every anti on this board and some new ones screaming at the tops of their lungs and linking it in EVERY gun discussion.

We would NEVER hear the end of it.

But since this was the ATF and not the nra, we hear deafening silence.

[Hoopla Phil]

27. As instructed by the ATF

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7357550n

yup

[rl6214]

16. Opinion piece

Where's the facts?

[Hoopla Phil]

26. Kicking your own thread??! LMAO!!! How about CBS's take on this

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7357550n

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[beevul]

4. I hate to burst your little bubble...well actually I don't.

In a five year span there were 66,028 total trace requests, only 18,585 were successful­ly traced.

"Yet, in a June 2009 report, the GAO estimated that less than a quarter of crime guns transferre­d to the Mexican Attorney General’s Office in 2008 were submitted to ATF for tracing"


Page 76
"the success rate of Mexican crime gun trace requests has declined since the start of Project Gunrunner. As illustrate­d in Figure 8, in FY 2005, 44 percent (661 of 1,518) of Mexican crime gun traces were successful­. The success rate fell to 27 percent (4,059 of 14,979 in FY 2007 and remained only at 31 percent (6,664 of 21,726) in FY 2009."

http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/ATF/e1101.pdf

[pipoman]

8. Imagine that

mediamatters, m$nbc, and nytimes (& the op, of coarse) all disregard what the justice dept has determined, in favor of ideology, and propaganda on this issue...shocker..

[beevul]

9. Yep.

Less than 1/4 of all the guns were submitted for tracing, and just over 1/4 of the guns submitted for tracing actually traced.


And they all ignore it for anti-gun ideology.

[provis99]

6. Send lawyers, guns, and money

I'm a desperate man
send lawyers guns and money
cause the shit has hit the fan..

[krispos42]

7. What percentage of the guns were traceable?

"90 percent of the weapons that could be traced were determined to have originated from various sources within the U.S."

And those "sources within the US" would seem to include both FFL retailers and, say, various federal departments, bureaus, and agencies. Humph. Imagine that.

Total percentage of weapons traced to the US is (90% = 0.90):

(0.90*X)*100


Where X is the total percentage of weapons that were able to be traced. Find X (in decimal).


Is it.... 1.00? Is it 0.10? Is it 0.01?





Quick! Somebody fetch me my dartboard, my dart-throwing monkey, and a bottle of gin! We'll have a number as soon as the monkey blows a 0.20!

[beevul]

10. See reply 4, Krispos, and the link it contains.

See reply 4, Krispos, and the link it contains.

You're good with graphs and such.

[krispos42]

14. X=0.28

Total untraceable: 47,443

Total traced: 18,585

Total traced: 66,028


Ergo, X=0.28=28%

So out of 66,028 traced guns, the total that came from the US was:

66,028*(0.28*0.90)=66,028*0.252=16,639 guns total came from US private and government sources.


That assumes that all guns collected had a trace attempt done on them. It is possible that some guns had no serial numbers on them for various reasons.


So where are the other 74.8% of seized guns coming from?

[beevul]

19. In terms of contributing to Mexicos gun problem...

"Yet, in a June 2009 report, the GAO estimated that less than a quarter of crime guns transferre­d to the Mexican Attorney General’s Office in 2008 were submitted to ATF for tracing"

From that link in post 4.

So if 66028 is the total submitted, and 18585 were traceable...


That would be 25.2 percent of...less than 1/4 of ALL guns transferred to the Mexican AGs office?


It would appear that some 256,000+ guns were, in total, submitted to the mexican AG office, and 18585 were actually able to be traced to American sources?

Does that sound right?

[krispos42]

24. Excellent point

Which means that US-sourced guns can only be definitively be said to be involved in about 6.25% of all guns collected. 18.75% can definitely NOT be from the US, and the other 75% is "unknown".

[Glassunion]

11. "0.20" is that code for a short person?

[krispos42]

13. Maybe in fathoms...

:rofl:

[lawodevolution]

12. Stop posting this dishonest garbage please

[rl6214]

18. Look at the source

she can't be helped. It's a sickness.

YUP

YUP

YUP

[jpak]

21. ((((REALITY))))

yup

[beevul]

23. Ask and ye shall recieve...

Ask and ye shall recieve. Heres some reality for you:



http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7357550n

[rl6214]

15. Opinion piece

Where's the facts?

[oneshooter]

25. They are safely locked in he/she/its memory. n/t

[Hoopla Phil]

28. Hummmm. . .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x383548