ATF takes aim at deep 'Iron river of guns'

[RamboLiberal]

Source: USA Today

Guns recovered in some of the largest recent weapons seizures in Mexico are being traced deep into the United States — miles from the volatile border — revealing an expanding trafficking network that feeds Mexico's violent drug cartels, according to government documents and U.S. investigators.

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives records show 90% of the weapons recovered and traced originate from a growing number of sources spanning from the Northwest to New England. The trafficking routes have created what Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., described earlier this week as an "iron river of guns" flowing to the warring cartels, contributing to about 7,000 deaths in the past 14 months.

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Four months after the largest weapons seizure in Mexican history, U.S. investigators have traced 383 of the more than 400 weapons seized from a stash house in Reynosa, Mexico, to 11 states including Ohio, South Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Michigan and Connecticut, according to ATF records.

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Escalating violence in the battle to control the lucrative drug trade in Mexico has increased the demand for weapons, while the cost for firearms along the U.S. side of the border has soared, Hoover said. Those market forces drive traffickers far into the interior of the United States in search of new and cheaper supplies of firearms.

Denise Dresser, a political science professor at Mexico's Autonomous Institute of Technology, told a Senate panel Tuesday that up to 2,000 weapons per day flow into Mexico from the United States.




Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-03-18-cartelguns_N.htm

[tangent90]

1. Any time you see a gun story that contains this little bit of idiocy:

"• The guns, many of them high-powered assault rifles, are streaming across the border at such a pace that some are being recovered in Mexico within days after their purchase in the U.S, according to ATF records."


You can be assured the writer is a moron with an agenda.

[truebrit71]

3. Why? You think the story is incorrect? US guns are NOT going into Mexico?

..You are not the first person I have heard say that and I am curious as to how you would substantiate that..?

[benEzra]

8. U.S. grenades, rocket launchers, and automatic weapons are not going into Mexico...

unless they are coming from Central America, from leftover Cold War stockpiles.

Handguns and a few non-automatic U.S.-market civilian rifles, yes, I'm sure there is a significant flow south (and not just to the cartels, but to Mexico's thriving underground gun market where ordinary Mexican citizens get their guns). But restricted military hardware, no, unless it is coming from our own government or being stolen/diverted from the military or law enforcement agencies. Because those things are not available on the U.S. civilian market.

[tangent90]

13. A few are, but the numbers they mention are pathetically small. My main objection is

the obligatory prepending of the hysteria-generating adjective "high powered" to go along with "assault rifle." It's about as
universal as some variant on "AK" which is another often wrong descriptive intended to raise the scare factor...most assault weapons are far LESS "powerful" than a typical hunting rifle, for example.

[Pavulon]

24. Sure they are Belgium too!

the FN weapons along with colt are shipping to their federal police and military who sell them to the cartels. US americans cant get belt fed weapons at the gun shop.

I would say the vast majority are leaking from their own supply. Easier to blame us.

[depakid]

19. And anytime you hear a person deny that assault weapons are a problem

in response to a story like and should freely available, you rest assured that the writer's got some sort of obsession.

[tangent90]

20. I know, obsessed with the Bill of Rights. That really sucks, doesn't it?

:eyes:

[depakid]

22. Here's what reasonable people know:

This is a hunting rifle:



It's meant to take deer and such.

-------------

This is an assault rifle:



It's meant to kill humans in military activities.

-------------

[Pavulon]

23. NO the top one is a SNIPER RIFLE

the bottom one is has no military application. ZERO.

note the picture with a fully automatic weapon. see the icon with lots of bullets. That is not a rifle, so can I get one legally in your universe?

[tangent90]

25. Good grief. Apparently you are not reasonable. That first one is a Weatherby Elephant gun

its only use is to kill elephants or possibly a rhino. It holds 2 or 3 .460 caliber bullets that would turn a deer into deerburger. The AR15 on the bottom is about 1/7th as powerful as the other one and is already essentially prohibited
from private hands (although it might be possible with the right connections and a lot of spare money)...but it frightens
the shit out of the gun grabbers because it LOOKS so fucking SCARY.

edit: I don't want to be misconstrued here, I do NOT approve of killing elephants or any other 'big game' or endangered
species that's only hunted for trophies rather than sustenance. Actually I oppose hunting of ANY animal except for
food.

[Trajan]

26. There are PLENTY of 'agendas' to go around ....

I intend to offer a straight up hunting rifle to the next armed soldier I meet, on the basis of your implied statement that 'assault weapons do not exist' ....

I will explain this is your thesis, and that it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt (here in the Gungeon and in American Legion bars everywhere) that there is no difference between his regular military weapon and the guns used by thousands of citizens, hopped up on beer and 'killing' beer cans on farm fences everywhere ....

I am recommending the get rid of their 'useless' military weaponry and go instead to Wal Mart to buy comparable weapons at deeply discounted prices ....

I am sure they will agree with you ....

[tangent90]

27. What's your agenda, inferring something that was not implied?

I was pointing out that it's standard practice to make sure to describe assault devices as "high powered" as if they were
somehow more lethal than a 30.06 or any of a dozen other perfectly innocuous looking hunting rifles...a grammatical trick sure to gyrate the hormones of fascist gun-grabbing Constitution-molesters. The rest of your comment has one redeeming social purpose, though...it's hilarious. Maybe not the way you intended, however.
:-)

[Paladin]

30. The Only "Grammatical Trick" In Evidence Here.....

....is you Gun Nuts trying yet again to take control of the argument by imposing your own narrow definitions on things such as "assault rifles." You're not fooling anybody but yourselves.

Oh, and by the way, Heroic Defender Of The Constitution: How many of your 749 DU posts have been devoted to any constitutional provisions other than the Second Amendment? How many of your posts deal with anything besides guns, guns, guns? If you're like the overwhelming majority of your cohorts, I'd bet it's somewhere between 1% and 0.....

[tangent90]

32. Oh, excuse me, you obviously have confused me with someone who

never mind, you're not even close to being worth it.

[Paladin]

35. Another Rapier-Sharp Response, I See...... (n/t)

[dionysus]

33. you gun nuts are a hoot...

i own a Garand so i challenge you to call me a gun grabber, but damn, do you jerk off to guns & ammo magazines or what?

:rofl:

[onehandle]

2. Call the suppliers out.

Question them. Question them. Question them.

Regulate the Hell out of gun suppliers.

Nothing in the second amendment that indicates that this "protected" consumer item cannot be scrutinized, tracked, and regulated.

[saigon68]

14. They are already regulated

And finger printed too.

[-..__...]

4. When is Mexico going to do thier part?

Funny how the Mexican government has cooperated little (in fact encouraged), in stemming the flow of illegal aliens entering the USA from their side of the border, but howl when the shoe is on the other foot.

[TimesSquareCowboy]

5. They're sending us cheap labor, we're sending them guns to kill each other.

How the hell are those two even remotely related?

[-..__...]

7. How are they not...

when the current border security measures are ineffective at preventing or easing the illegal flow of both?

They pretty much gave us the middle finger when asked for cooperation in stopping illegal entry.

At least the ATF is making an effort to trace and prevent the illegal firearms sales going to Mexico.

When is Mexico going to do the same about the "cheap labor" problem?

[RaleighNCDUer]

10. They are fighting a civil war with the cartels there -

I suspect that is commanding a bit more attention than farmers ruined by NAFTA looking for work.

And no, the ATF is NOT "making an effort to trace and prevent the illegal firearms". They are investigating after the fact, when weapons are recovered there by the Mexican government. Prevention is not in their vocabulary.

[AtheistCrusader]

9. They are both the result of unregulated traffic crossing the border.

People and drugs one way, guns the other. Neither the US, nor Mexico has control of the border. We're talking about hundreds of tons of drugs, and probably tens of thousands of tons of guns going the other way.

That single gun siezure was about 1.5 tons of firearms. That's a LOT of large, heavy stuff being trafficked across the border, and no one is seeing it.

The other direction we have, more or less, human enslavement, people dying of thirst walking, people being victimized by human smugglers, etc.

Both are unacceptable.

[AndyTiedye]

15. Shipping Powders Back and Forth, Black goes South and White Goes North

Grateful Dead

[FudaFuda]

6. End the drug war. Legalize, regulate, and tax.

This is not a gun problem. It is a 'drug war' problem.

[Kolesar]

11. Americans could quit buying coke for the sake of sparing the lives of innocent Mexicans

Cocaine use is a risk factor for heart attacks and strokes.

[Fumesucker]

18. Americans could have quite buying alcohol during Prohibition for the sake of innocent..

Americans..

But they didn't..

Alcohol use is a risk factor in a great number of truly nasty conditions, in fact you can *die* from alcohol withdrawal.

Legislation is possible to change, human nature not so much.

[Plucketeer]

16. This IS the answer

But I'd go it one step further. We should buy the drugs from wherever, test them to see their pure and hand them out for free to anyone over 18 that wants them. Coke, weed, heroin, whatever. Sure it'll ruin lives, but what is the war over them doing??? We're under seige in many communities as gangs vie for sales territory!

Look, it's WELL KNOWN that drugs can render you useless or dead. Hell, put a big skull and crossbones on the free packages we hand out. If you need an upside, think of how the "stupid" genes will be culled from the pool. Once enough lives have been ruined and folks get disgusted at seeing dead and dying lying about in the streets, THAT will cure the whole mess.

Drug war! My ass! It's a deadly and un-winnable game of Whack-a-mole that'll suck away valuable revenue as long as we delude ourselves to thinking we're doing the right thing! :crazy:

[soulcore]

17. Lumping coke and heroin in with weed...

...proves how much you still have to learn about "drugs".

[tangent90]

21. You misunderstand...it isn't a chemistry issue, it has to do with individual freedom.

As much as some people would like to try, it's neither possible nor sane to protect everyone from themselves from cradle to grave.

[soulcore]

31. We agree on that. n/t

[Plucketeer]

34. And THAT was my point

I couldn't care LESS about the good/bad of one drug vs another. What I care about is valuable revenues being wasted and the lives of good, upstanding public servants being sacraficed to stem the flow of these substances. We need to stop the demand (years of experience prove that to be a futile and expensive endeavor) OR squash the cut-throat supply system.

I give a shit about drug abusers. I'm smart enough to just say no. But why should I and others suffer possilbe death and anguish because the users can't say no???

[DevonRex]

12. READ THIS: It's proper to say ATF or BATF or the BATF, NOT "the" ATF.

There were so many folks who said "the ATF" in this thread that I decided to make one statement.

Thanks to the OP for using the correct term. :hi:

[wartrace]

28. "Iron river" of guns?

Hey Sparky, they are not made of iron. It sounds like Mexico needs to tighten up the border a little bit if they are having trouble with smugglers. I can't imagine what they are going through having things brought into their country illegally.:nopity: (imagine how thrilled we are with the meth going the other way)

[The abyss]

29. More cartoon news.

“Iron River of guns” LOL. Somehow, someway – US citizens are responsible – so what? Oh yeah, they should give up a few more inches in their constitutional rights.

The 2nd amendment was never about “hunting”. It was about acknowledging a power of the people too not only hang their representatives but defeat the government in a stand of arms. This rule actually stood as practical until the passage of the 1934 firearm act. Prior to 1934 any private citizen could place an order to any factory and have their own liquid cooled Browning delivered. Want a case of Thompsons, no problem. Want grenades, mortars perhaps a 75mm field piece? Order away.

What did our government fear that caused them to suddenly gut the intent of the 2nd amendment? The 1932 Bonus March. They feared an organized, armed force returning to Washington.