By Seth Richardson
You would have thought that the Democrats would have learned their lesson about the politically toxic subject of gun control after the election disasters of 1994, when Democrats lost control of the Congress, and Al Gore’s loss in 2000. But gun-banning leftist ideology never rests, and the desire to disarm Americans is unabated.
President Obama solemnly promised us that our guns were safe during the campaign, V.P. Joe Biden downplayed his culpability in the gun control debacle of 2000, and even Hillary Clinton tried to make herself out as a shotgun-loving defender of the 2nd Amendment. But they are all unapologetic, bald-faced liars. Like most politicians, and all gun-ban advocates, the only time they aren’t lying is when they are dead and buried, and even then their shades haunt us.
Of course any rational, freedom-loving American knows this, and gun owners know it best of all, which explains why last weekend’s Tanner Gun Show in Denver was so packed to the gills that they had to turn people away for fire safety reasons. Patriotic, law-abiding Americans know what’s coming, and they are stockpiling firearms and ammunition at a record pace. And you should join them.
Secretary of State Clinton just finished up appeasing Mexico on her trip south of the border, saying that Americans are responsible for Mexico’s violence problem on the border because of our “insatiable demand” for drugs and our lax gun control laws that allow cartels to be armed with guns smuggled from the U.S. This will soon become the justification for new “assault weapon” bans and other gun control efforts by the Obama administration, which is composed of a rogue’s gallery of notorious anti-gun zealots who have been pushing this agenda for more than 20 years now.
In her remarks with the Mexican Foreign Secretary in Mexico City on March 25th, Clinton said that “[the drug cartels] are armed by the transport of weapons from the United States to Mexico.” “Obviously,” Clinton said, “I am someone who supported the assault weapons ban which was passed in 1994, but it was passed with an expiration date and it expired ten years later. I, as a senator, supported measures to try to reinstate it. Politically, that is a very big hurdle in our Congress. But there may be some approaches that could be acceptable, and we are exploring those. Certainly, the export of assault weapons and illegal weapons is something that has grave consequences for Mexico. And we’re going to look at whatever is possible that we can do ourselves within the Administration, and we will explore with Congress other steps to take.”
Interviewed by Greta Van Susteren on Fox News’ “On the Record” on Thursday, March 27th, Clinton said, “The guns that are sold in the United States, which are illegal in Mexico, get smuggled and shipped across our border and arm these terrible drug-dealing criminals so that they can outgun these poor police officers along the border and elsewhere in Mexico. If we want to have them in our country, fine. That’s-you know, that’s for us to decide. But the Mexican police and people have decided they don’t want them in their country, and we’re facilitating by our inability to stop the illegal sale and smuggling of these guns. I remember 15 years ago, the reason the assault weapons ban was passed is because police chiefs in America begged for it. They said, I’m sending my guys out onto the street, they’re being outgunned. The criminals, the gang members, they have automatic weapons, military assault rifles. Get them off the street. Give our guys a fighting chance.”
The only problem is that Clinton was lying in 1994, and she continues to perpetrate the lie today. The truth is that most of the “automatic weapons, military assault rifles” Clinton complained about in 1994 simply didn’t exist, and the ones used by the drug cartels are smuggled into Mexico from places like Cuba, China and Russia through Central America. Many are Mexican military arms stolen from the Mexican government by highly trained Mexican anti-narcotics soldiers who have defected to the cartels and now call themselves “Los Zetas.”
The guns being used by the cartels are primarily fully automatic military assault rifles, RPG rocket launchers, hand grenades and other strictly military arms that are simply not available on the civilian U.S. market. Cartel hit men do use pistols, and many of those are obtained in the U.S. through straw-man purchases, but it’s nearly impossible for a gun dealer to detect a sophisticated straw-man purchasing effort by dedicated cartel members, although gun dealers and the BATFE are working to find ways to do so.
While it is true that some 90 percent of firearms seized in Mexico and submitted for tracing to the BATFE have been traced back to domestic sources, the anti-gun left, including the liberal mainstream media, have been hysterically mischaracterizing exactly what the BATFE information really means. On March 25th, Newsweek online reporters Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball ignorantly repeated the lie by saying, “As much as 90 percent of the assault weapons and other guns used by Mexican drug cartels are coming from the United States…” The list of liberal media outlets trumpeting the lie is literally endless.
But why is it a lie? First, it’s important to recognize that the vast majority of confiscated guns that the BATFE has access to for tracing are handguns, shotguns and ordinary rifles, including some semi-automatic civilian look-alike versions of fully-automatic military rifles like the M-16 and M-4, all of which are perfectly legal to own here (for now). And most of the arms traced by the BATFE are of the type used by petty Mexican criminals, not cartel drug lords. The cartel drug lords want, have and use actual military equipment, not civilian counterparts. They are fighting a real war against real military personnel, and the drug cartels have plenty of money to obtain the best military armaments they can find. They don’t need U.S. lookalikes.
But the most egregious lie perpetrated by Clinton and the anti-gun left is the conflation of the BATFE trace results with the overall presence of guns in Mexico. The “90 percent come from the U.S.” statistic is deliberately used in a deceptive manner to try to inflate the actual number of guns flowing from the U.S. to Mexico. The truth of the matter is that BATFE has only traced a relatively small number of recovered guns, of which some 90 percent have their origin in the U.S. The BATFE declines to release the current actual number of guns they have traced. But in testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in February 2007, BATFE Assistant Director William Hoover testified that in 2007 only about 1,547 guns were submitted by Mexico for tracing by the BATFE. That’s a drop in the bucket, particularly when compared to the tens of thousands of tons of drugs smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico each year. How is securing Mexico’s border against gun smuggling more of a problem for us than securing our border against drug smuggling and terrorists? It’s not, but for Clinton and Obama and the gun banners, it’s a prime opportunity to forward the anti-gun agenda without as much risk of a Democrat backlash in the upcoming congressional elections.
Mexico and the U.S. have signed an agreement to give Mexico access to the BATFE’s eTrace system, which will allow Mexican border Governors to easily submit serial numbers for tracing. This initiative, signed in August of 2008 under the Bush administration, along with Mexico’s cooperation in BATFE’s “Operation Gunrunner” should help reduce the number of guns smuggled into Mexico. But Mexico still refuses to submit the serial numbers of ALL crime guns recovered, and even the eTrace system cannot track a gun not submitted because it would embarrass Mexico, or which didn’t originate in the U.S., so we still have no way of knowing how many guns in the hands of cartel members are actually from the U.S. and how many are from other sources, because we don’t know how many guns the cartels have. Mexico is refusing to cooperate with BATFE requests to supply serial numbers on all confiscated firearms, most likely because Mexico has vested interests in perpetrating the fraud. The first reason is to save face and conceal the vulnerability of Mexico’s border controls to military munitions from Central America. Another reason is money from the U.S.
Because of the violence on the border, the U.S. has promised 80 million dollars in aid to Mexico to acquire and operate Blackhawk helicopters, and the Merida Initiative, a joint agreement with Mexico and other Latin American countries approved by Congress in 2008, has been funded to the tune of $1.5 billion. It is not in Mexico’s economic or security interests to allow the U.S. or the world to find out that many of the arms being used against its own military came from its own military and are being wielded by former members of its own military. It is also not in Mexico’s best interests to be forced to admit that the smuggling of military arms and equipment from Central America and Cuba, among other sources, is rampant and uncontrolled on Mexico’s southern, eastern and western borders.
The import of the lie perpetrated by Clinton is that she, and others, are attempting to deliberately inflate the alleged number of guns use by the drug cartels and then imply that the vast majority of them come from the U.S. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that southbound border security is Mexico’s problem, not ours, this is quite simply a patent and inexcusable lie that will be used by the lying, gun-banning Obama administration to justify restricting American’s gun rights.
UPDATE: Fox News reports that BATFE spokesperson confirms that only 17 percent of all guns seized by Mexican authorities originate in the U.S. See the report here.
© 2009 Altnews
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Texas NFA Trust…
[...]BOHICA-Gun bans are on the way! Updated – The Broadside : Colorado Springs Gazette, CO[...]…
“…since NO gun ban legislation is on the table at the moment — correct me if I’m wrong — further debate on the topic can wait”: For the sake of intellectual honesty, Obama-Biden’s campaign agenda included making the federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, and it remains on the White House’s online agenda at this writing.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/urban_policy/
Seth,
Thanks for the refresher course on late-20th Century gun-lover logic & rhetoric. After a decade or so these things sort of drop out of my memory….
As noted, some of us on the Anti-Gun Fringe of the Left would ban anything that reminds them of Rambo, just as many anti-drug hysterics don’t know the difference between marijuana and morphine. This is sad, but as most of the substantive debate takes place in the middle of that bell curve, it doesn’t bother me much.
And since NO gun ban legislation is on the table at the moment — correct me if I’m wrong — further debate on the topic can wait.
“In short, there is no credible evidence that I’ve found to demonstrate that any, some or all of the guns traced were taken from drug cartel members”: Fair enough. Traced weapons are a small & specific part of the problem. Here’s a larger view from the Department of Justice — from May 2008, so it’s Mister Bush’s Department of Justice:
“Houston is a significant source area for weapons smuggled south into Mexico. Mexican DTOs and their associated enforcement groups generally rely on firearms trafficking from the United States to Mexico to obtain weapons for their smuggling and enforcement operations. Drug traffickers, firearms smugglers, and independent criminals smuggle large quantities of firearms and ammunition from Houston to Mexico on behalf of Mexican DTOs, which then use these weapons to defend territory, eliminate rivals, enforce business dealings, control members, and challenge law enforcement. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) estimates that thousands of weapons are smuggled into Mexico every year. Firearms are typically purchased or stolen from gun stores, pawnshops, gun shows, and private residences prior to being smuggled into Mexico, where they are often sold for a markup of 300 to 400 percent. Moreover, large caches of firearms often are stored on both sides of the Southwest Border for use by Mexican DTOs and their enforcement groups.”
http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs27/27493/distro.htm
Far be it from me to argue with Mister Bush’s Department of Justice….
“The import to US gun owners is that because some criminal cartel elements have created a sophisticated straw-man buying program that the gun dealer has no real way of detecting before the fact, the Obama administration is preparing to restrict the rights of US citizens”: By your own reasoning, that is a falsehood (“The implication of Clinton is that the US is 90 percent responsible for the arms in Mexico, which is a falsehood”).
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” Equally true: No one sneaks up on a paranoiac, because he’s constantly spinning around to see who’s following him.
Guffman,
Re: ““The truth is that most of the ‘automatic weapons, military assault rifles’ Clinton complained about in 1994 simply didn’t exist…”: Eh? Explain?”
The Clinton “assault weapons” ban was predicated on the false premise that “machine guns” and “assault weapons” were the “weapon of choice” of drug dealers, and that therefore that civilian-legal semi-automatic long guns that LOOK like military assault weapons, along with “high-capacity magazines” needed to be banned. It was a ban based on cosmetic similarities, not upon either function or actual percentage of use by criminals.
There was no credible evidence that the underlying argument was true, as was proven at the time by the NRA and other pro-gun groups. First, there is no such thing as a “semi-automatic assault weapon.” The term “assault weapon”, which applies to a specific class of select-fire, large caliber military firearms was deliberately adopted by the Clinton administration so that gun-banners could conflate the presence of semi-automatic firearms that LOOKED like fully-automatic military assault rifles with the military version. In many instances, media reportage about the ban showed video of people firing fully-automatic military assault rifles and then either implicitly or expressly stated that these were the types of weapons that the ban applied to, when in reality what was targeted were semi-automatic look-alikes.
Problem was that machine guns, which is to say any firearm that fires more than one round with a single pull of the trigger, have been extremely closely regulated since the 1930s, when the Gun Control Act of 1934 was enacted to control the use of Thompson sub-machine guns and Browning Automatic Rifles (BAR) by criminals like Al Capone and Pretty Boy Floyd. Since that time it’s still been legal for a civilian to own a machine gun, and there are about 350,000 of them in private hands, and in all that time, a legally-owned machine gun has been used by its owner to commit a crime exactly ONE TIME. And that was a law-enforcement officer who went berserk and used it to kill his wife.
Nor could the Clinton administration prove that the semi-automatic look-alike versions like the AR-15 were being used in a significant number of drug-related (or any for that matter) crimes. FBI records from the period showed that such long rifles were used in less than one percent of all firearms crimes.
None of this prevented the Democrats from forcing this bill through Congress. When it came up for renewal in 2004, the NRA and others proved conclusively that the original premises used were flatly false, and that in the 10 years the ban had been in effect, the ban had created no perceptible change in gun crime, positive or negative, thus confirming that so-called “assault weapons” are used only a tiny fraction of crime and that the ban was a political ploy of the anti-gun coalition.
So, the lie told by Hillary and Bill and their ilk was to use the compliant liberal media to spread the disinformation that “assault weapons” were the “weapon of choice for drug dealers”, which is demonstrably false, and then deliberately confusing the public by conflating true military automatic weapons with their semi-automatic civilian-legal counterparts merely because of a superficial physical resemblance. The weapons that were purported to the the problem simply were not being used in the manner claimed, nor did the conflated military weapons exist in any significant numbers in the criminal world.
Re: “So that 90-percent figure is rather important, no? Please correct me if I’m wrong. Elsewhere in your screed you refer to the pistol-handlers as “petty” criminals, but it’s hard for me to characterize any gun crime as “petty,” and one h#ll of a lot of them are committed against American tourists. That’s OK with you?”
No, of course not, but again, Clinton is flatly stating that the US is the main supplier to the cartels when it comes to weapons. But this link has not been proven because the Mexican government does not release to the BATFE the circumstances under which those crime guns seized that Mexico chooses to submit for tracing were seized. In short, there is no credible evidence that I’ve found to demonstrate that any, some or all of the guns traced were taken from drug cartel members. It’s just as likely that they were seized from ordinary Mexican citizens who procured the guns for self-protection in a place where the police are known to be corrupt, and it’s also likely that they are being seized from street criminals.
The lie is the assumption that all guns seized in Mexico must belong to cartel members involved in drug violence. It is lawful for Mexican citizens to own handguns, even though it is relatively rare due to police corruption. It’s certain that some Mexicans subscribe to the theory that it’s better to be tried by twelve than carried by six, so they procure and possess “illegal” firearms that they use for legal self-defense.
Moreover, as I said, Mexico’s problem with guns being smuggled in is not the U.S.’s problem. It is not our responsibility to prevent such smuggling, and indeed, if we presume that some proportion of the guns smuggled in are used by otherwise law-abiding citizens for self-defense that has been denied to them by their own corrupt law enforcement officials, one could argue that the U.S. has a moral imperative to assist in arming the law-abiding citizens of Mexico so that they can enjoy the same deterrent and self-defense benefits that U.S. gun ownership offers us.
The proper response to attacks on Americans by armed Mexican bandits is simply not to go to Mexico in the first place, since Mexico refuses to allow US citizens to carry arms in self defense, and has arrested and jailed individuals visiting Mexico simply for having inadvertently overlooked a SINGLE ROUND of pistol ammunition (not accompanied by a gun) found in a vehicle.
The Los Angeles Times reported on March 15th 2009 that military-grade weapons including hand grenades, RPGs, armor-piercing ammunition and anti-tank rockets are being smuggled through Central America or by sea with points of origin in South Korea, Israel, Spain and former Soviet bloc countries and governments, including Mexico, through diversion to the black market or direct corrupt transfer. In the last two years, more than 2200 grenades have been seized by Mexican authorities, and hand grenades are simply not available on the civilian market in the US or anywhere else. Neither are machine guns, particularly those based on Kalishnikov designs that are manufactured by governments all over the world.
Re: “And that actual number is… what? Do we know? Is the 90-percent figure less important because of this trivial fact? Please explain why.”
No, we don’t know, and yes, it may be trivial. It hinges on how many guns are being seized FROM CARTEL MEMBERS, what kind of guns those are specifically; whether they are US legal handguns and rifles or whether they are military arms not legal for ownership in the US and not obtained from the US civilian market.
The implication of Clinton is that the US is 90 percent responsible for the arms in Mexico, which is a falsehood. The US civilian market MAY be responsible for 90 percent of some small number of guns seized by Mexico and submitted for tracing, but without knowing how many TOTAL guns they have seized, and from whom, it’s impossible to say that the US is responsible for “90 percent of the guns used by drug cartels.”
Moreover, if what is being smuggled and seized in Mexico are ordinary civilian-legal US firearms like pistols and semi-automatic rifles, then it will be utterly impossible to stem the flow without closing every gun store in the US, which would suit Clinton, Obama and Feinstein just fine, because so long as the buyer passes the federal NICS check, the gun dealer has no obligation to investigate further, nor should he. The import to US gun owners is that because some criminal cartel elements have created a sophisticated straw-man buying program that the gun dealer has no real way of detecting before the fact, the Obama administration is preparing to restrict the rights of US citizens in order to compensate for MEXICO’S inability to control smuggling into its own country.
As for placing trust in the Democrats not to take adverse action against US gun owners if given sufficient pretext to do so….sorry, I don’t trust a Democrat, much less an avowed anti-gun Democrat, any farther than I can throw his car.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Seth’s Talking Point No. 1: “…they are all unapologetic, bald-faced liars.” They say they’re going to keep hands off Our Sacred Guns? They’re lying. Period.
Seth’s Talking Point No. 2: “This will soon become the justification for new ‘assault weapon’ bans and other gun control efforts by the Obama administration….” No real support for this assertion, but I guess we’re way past all that by now.
If asserting it made it true, Seth would be golden.
Guffman’s Talking Point No. 1: There is a small, quiet cadre of Democrats who want a full-scale firearms ban in the United States — as soon as possible, and by any means necessary. We are small and quiet because we know nothing will come of it. There’s no sense fighting for a certain loser. The Party knows this. All we True Believers can hope for is restriction of the worst of the worst. For some, this amounts to keeping military-grade weapons — RPGs, etc. — out of the hands of the average Gazette reader; for others, it means banishing anything Rambo-looking. And we hope we can control the flow of weapons to other nations. Beyond that, the Blue Dog Democrats and the Party’s newfound grasp of Pragmatism will keep us sidelined for a long, long time.
Guffman’s Talking Point No. 2: The stockpiling of guns and ammo is an unexpected boon for dealers in guns and ammo, who are behind all these rumors about the Obama Administration’s lust to take away all your guns. They are laughing all the way to the bank. Ask yourself: Who would have the most motivation to spread the Jackbooted-Trooper theory of gun control? The question is the answer.
Queries:
“The truth is that most of the ‘automatic weapons, military assault rifles’ Clinton complained about in 1994 simply didn’t exist…”: Eh? Explain?
“…and the ones used by the drug cartels are smuggled into Mexico from places like Cuba, China and Russia through Central America. Many are Mexican military arms stolen from the Mexican government by highly trained Mexican anti-narcotics soldiers who have defected to the cartels and now call themselves ‘Los Zetas’”: I’m sure you have some awesome links to support that. (Or maybe not. I feel The Broadside has drifted into uncharted waters. Not sure what the Pirate’s Code is any more — or if it was ever anything more than “guidelines….”)
“Cartel hit men do use pistols, and many of those are obtained in the U.S. through straw-man purchases…” OK, taken as read…. “…it is true that some 90 percent of firearms seized in Mexico and submitted for tracing to the BATFE have been traced back to domestic sources”: So that 90-percent figure is rather important, no? Please correct me if I’m wrong. Elsewhere in your screed you refer to the pistol-handlers as “petty” criminals, but it’s hard for me to characterize any gun crime as “petty,” and one h#ll of a lot of them are committed against American tourists. That’s OK with you? “… but it’s nearly impossible for a gun dealer to detect a sophisticated straw-man purchasing effort by dedicated cartel members, although gun dealers and the BATFE are working to find ways to do so”: And what do you suppose they will find if they succeed beyond my wildest dreams?
“The ’90 percent come from the U.S.’ statistic is deliberately used in a deceptive manner to try to inflate the actual number of guns flowing from the U.S. to Mexico”: And that actual number is… what? Do we know? Is the 90-percent figure less important because of this trivial fact? Please explain why.
“How is securing Mexico’s border against gun smuggling more of a problem for us than securing our border against drug smuggling and terrorists? It’s not, but for Clinton and Obama and the gun banners, it’s a prime opportunity to forward the anti-gun agenda without as much risk of a Democrat backlash in the upcoming congressional elections”: Presuming an anti-gun agenda. “Agenda” is the twin sister of “conspiracy.” I’ve already made my points about conspiracies. The Blue Dog Democrats won’t accept an anti-gun agenda. Pragmatism rules this version of the Democratic Party — smart pragmatism, at that. This will not be an issue in 2010.
It has been a real pleasure to read the articles and comments on the Broadship. Far too many sites attract people who can’t put coherent sentences together to create readable paragraphs.
Keep up the good work folks.
Hillary says you terrible American are the cause for the killings in mexico. We should have elected Ted Nugent,,,,, people kill people not guns! The gun has to be loaded, aimed and the trigger pulled. If I want to kill someone there are many ways to do it, you don;t need a gun!!!! On the other hand, A Government that fears an armed citizenary is a Government to Fear!!!!!!! Who said that? Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin? or maybe Thomas Paine,,,George Washington? Well you get the picture! Maybe Hillary shuld move to Mexico and she would not have to be one of us big bad red blodded Americans clinging to our guns and our bible…..but if it is a Quran and you have a bomb she is cool with that!!!! Enough said!
How many promises does Obama get to break before the people who voted him into office get mad? how long before the biased media turns on him? I wish he would go back on drilling in Anwar. That would at least be productive. 3 million new jobs, most of which would not be in Alaska. $ 1.7 Trillion in tax revenues! That sounds good. We could let the oil companies bail out the US government! Tel your Senators and Representatives to pass a law requiring the offering of drilling rights on the 0.02 % of uninhabitable land for drilling. Keep the money in the USA!!!!!