Posts tagged Washington D.C.

This story, “Legal U.S. Gun Sales to Mexico Arming Cartels,” isn’t getting a whole lot of attention from the domestic media. CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson has dug up some bones that brings a bit of transparency to Washington’s war on your gun rights.

The problem of weapons legally sold to Mexico – then diverted to violent cartels – is becoming more urgent. That’s because the U.S. has quietly authorized a massive escalation in the number of guns sold to Mexico through “direct commercial sales.” It’s a way foreign countries can acquire firearms faster and with less disclosure than going through the Pentagon.

Here’s how it works: A foreign government fills out an application to buy weapons from private gun manufacturers in the U.S. Then the State Department decides whether to approve.

And it did approve 2,476 guns to be sold to Mexico in 2006. In 2009, that number was up nearly 10 times, to 18,709. The State Department has since stopped disclosing numbers of guns it approves, and wouldn’t give CBS News figures for 2010 or 2011.

Further down the article comes this intriguing quote:

“These sales by the industry actually support U.S. national security interests,” Keane told Attkisson. “If they didn’t, the State Department wouldn’t allow them.”

Larry Keane, interestingly enough, is a lobbyist for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, and he’s advocating for and speaking on behalf of gun sales to foreign countries brokered by the U.S. government.

According to Investors.com, emails that were obtained by CSB show that “ATF officials discussed using the deliberate transfer of weapons to Mexican drug cartels to justify a new gun regulation known as “Demand Letter 3.’” Remember that shortly after Obama was elected, his administration, led by gun control pusher Rahm Emanuel, started circulating the falsehoods about the “problem” of illegal guns being funneled to Mexico to fuel the drug violence [See this propaganda piece, "GAO Ties US Guns to Mexico Violence," in the June 18, 2009 WSJ].

Despite the incomplete data, GAO investigators conclude that the U.S., and in particular the Southwest border states of Texas, California and Arizona, are the source of most weapons trafficked into Mexico.

I blogged about it here. That was the beginning of another new chapter in the war on peaceful American gun owners. The U.S. government pushes drugs across the border, strategically sells guns to the military {gangs}, creates and exacerbates the violence, and then it uses and magnifies the crisis it has created as a tool for pushing its anti-gun, anti-freedom agenda here in the United States.