Cartel Grenades

MSNBC reports on the newest concern to surface in the never-ending Mexican Drug Cartel violence on the border.

It was a scenario U.S. law enforcement had long feared: A fragmentation grenade from Mexico's bloody drug war tossed into a public place.

Only the grenade thrower's bumbling prevented bloodshed in a south Texas bar — he neglected to pull a second safety clasp. But the act was proof that one of the deadliest weapons in Mexico's drug battle is a real threat to the U.S., and investigators are stepping up efforts to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Besides the mistake made by the attacker, which prevented a disaster, there was an impressive act of heroism on the part of an off-duty police officer. After the grenade bounced off the floor and landed on a pool table, he "picked it up and threw it back out the door. No one was hurt, no arrests were made, and authorities are divided about whether the targets were rival gang members or off-duty police officers."

The hand grenade used in this failed attack was identified a having come from the same batch of weapons that were used in two other attacks, in October at the U.S. consulate in Monterrey, Mexico, and at a television station in early January in the same city. The grenade thrown at the consulate failed to explode also, and no one was injured when the grenade hit the Televisa network's studio as it aired its nightly newscast.

But all three grenades were manufactured at the same time and place, and were at one point together in the same batch from South Korea. Their manufacture date was unavailable.

The immediate source of these weapons is the black market which flourished after Central America's civil wars. Some are brought in by weapons smugglers. Others are diverted from the region's militaries: In April, Guatemala seized 563 grenades after a shootout with Mexican drug cartel members, and officials later determined the grenades came from Guatemalan military bases.

The article mentions that the United States and South Korea are the biggest producers of grenades found in Mexico. I couldn't help but wonder why they're not claiming 90% of the grenades have been traced back to the U.S. I guess that's because South Korea has a big piece of the action.

ATF officials said the United States keeps tight controls over its own grenade inventories and that it knows of no grenades recovered in Mexico that were taken directly from American military supplies.

What do you think of that? Wouldn't that be similar to that lawsuit against Glock.

They claimed that the manufacturers deliberately made more guns than the legitimate market could support and sold them through channels that would reach a "secondary market" of private and under-the-table transactions.

Although the lawsuit was unsuccessful, it sounded quite plausible to me. In a similar way, American grenade manufacturers are producing far more than we need for our own military, and shipping their product out to unstable Central American Countries in spite of the clear probability that many will end up in the Mexican Drug War. And, just like the Glock people, the grenade producers shrug their shoulders and say it's not their problem, they certainly can't be held responsible for what happens to their product down the line.

What's your opinion? Is that how it goes? Are you all right with it?

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