Posted on 12/18/2010 6:35:15 AM PST by Second Amendment First
This spring, President Obama promised Mexican President Felipe Calderon that he would work to deter gunrunning south of the border. Behind the scenes, White House officials were putting the brakes on a proposal to require gun dealers to report bulk sales of the high-powered semiautomatic rifles favored by drug cartels.
Justice Department officials had asked for White House approval to require thousands of gun dealers along the border to report the purchases to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. ATF investigators expected to get leads on suspected arms traffickers.
Senior law enforcement sources said the proposal from the ATF was held up by the White House in early summer. The sources, who asked to be anonymous because they were discussing internal deliberations, said that the effort was shelved by then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, a veteran of battles with the gun lobby during the Clinton administration.
Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Emanuel, who is running for mayor of Chicago, said Emanuel "did not stop the policy from being implemented." Emanuel "has never taken a back seat to anyone when it comes to standing up to the NRA to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals," LaBolt said.
White House spokesman Reid Cherlin said, "We don't comment on interagency policy deliberations, but the president is committed to cracking down on violence on the Southwest border."
The plan - which officials knew would be strongly opposed by the National Rifle Association - was perceived as too volatile just before midterm elections, the sources said.
Last month, ATF Deputy Director Kenneth Melson asked the Justice Department to try again, law enforcement officials said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
So basically, anything larger than a .22 is a “high powered rifle” according to these idiots. More stupid govt definitions, like 26 year old “children”.
Impossible. Nothing gets past our secure southern border.
How about this for a plan. Mexico agrees to keep illegals, criminals, gangs and drug organizations out of the US and we agree not to sell them guns?
The drug cartels use fully automatic weapons and military hardware stolen from the Mexican government.
This is simply liberals blaming the United States for Mexico’s problems.
I suspect if Mexico would allow its citizens to be armed that the death rate would go way down after the people began to successfully defend themselves.
Why is the US expected to enforce Mexican gun laws. If Mexico wants to stop contraband from flowing across its northern border, then it should secure said border.
Yep. Everyone knows that the NRA is in the gun-running business. /s
Too volatile before midterm elements... But now that the election is over, Rahm says that he’ll take a backseat to no one in fighting the NRA.
Actually it is America’s fault , We arm the Mexican army with the m-16’s used by the drug cartel. We must stop all arms delivery to the Mexican army. 95% of weapons used by the drug cartels are military weapons, not available to the general public in the U.S.
If the people of Mexico were allowed to own guns, perhaps the drug cartels would not be able to intimidate them so much.
As usual, this is about US citizen control, not cross-border weapons trade control.
http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20101206_mexico_security_memo_dec_6_2010
Arms trafficking in Mexico is a very complex arena, with multiple foreign and domestic suppliers and a robust list of domestic consumers. Despite the varied nature of suppliers and consumers, the international media and Mexican politicians almost exclusively have focused on the flow of arms from the United States southward into Mexico. While the illegal flow of arms from the United States to Mexico deserves attention, those shipments consist primarily of .45-, .357-, and .40-caliber and 9 mm handguns and ammunition, as well as AR-15, AK-47 and the occasional .50-caliber rifles and ammunition. Less often mentioned by the Mexican government and international media is the military-grade weaponry flowing from Central America and South America into Mexico, shipments of significant concern to many in Mexico’s security sector.
The civil wars and insurgencies that have plagued Latin America over the past 50 years have all but subsided — except in remote parts of Colombia and Peru — leaving a tremendous surplus of military-grade weapons in black markets throughout the region. This weaponry comprises everything from AK-47s to fragmentation grenades to rocket-propelled grenades to light anti-tank weapons. Corrupt elements in these countries’ militaries also guarantee a supply of newer weapon systems.
The increased frequency of grenade attacks over the past two years throughout Mexico can be attributed to the flow of weapons from the south; they certainly are not being brought into Mexico from the United States. The large majority of fragmentation grenades seized and deployed by the cartels in Mexico are South Korean-manufactured M57s, though U.S.- and Israeli-manufactured grenades also have been found, weapons originally sold to third-country militaries. Several of the seized M57 grenades were traced back to lots sold to the Guatemalan and Salvadoran militaries several years ago. Some of these grenades have made it all the way into the United States.
The flow of weapons into Mexico from the United States and Central and South America both deserve attention. The lopsided Mexican government focus on the U.S. flow largely has resulted from a desire for political gain and funding. In contrast to the U.S. government, the governments of Guatemala and El Salvador have a hard enough time keeping a lid on their own domestic security situation. They have very little to offer in the way of countering this weapons flow. (In some cases, corrupt officials in those two Central American countries stand to gain from these illegal sales.) The United States, however, has much to offer in terms of funding and other programs (such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ eTrace program), and therefore Mexico makes every attempt to keep attention on the weapons-flow issue focused on the flow south from the United States.
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