Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Arming the Mexican Drug Cartels

This documentary was first aired in October 2011.

I encourage people who follow the discussion of gun issues here to view it; if you don't have access to Current TV through your cable service, consider getting it.  The documentary may also be available online or through sources like a library in your area.  This particular documentary addresses the overwhelming contribution of guns from the U.S. into Mexico, the NRA, the gun show loophole, and the Obama administration requirement on multiple gun sales reporting that - contrary to what some of our commenters were expecting, from the assurances of the NRA - was found to be perfectly legal recently, as I posted here.

For those of you weak on geography (as sadly too many Americans are, another failure of our education system) Juarez is across the border from El Paso, Texas.  The two cities are considered one of the largest bi-national metropolitan areas.

Watch. Learn. Think.  Think about following the money through the NRA, back to the gun manufacturers. We need to act.

From Vanguard / Current TV:



Synopsis:
In "Arming the Mexican Cartels," Christof Putzel and the Renaud Brothers report from Juarez, Mexico, commonly known as the Murder Capital of the World. American guns are flooding across the border into Mexico, arming deadly cartel drug wars which continue to spiral out of control. Embedded with Mexican Police, Army Special Forces and Juarez CSI teams, Christof takes viewers on a journey where few dare to go, following a trail of blood, drugs and guns that inevitably leads back to the United States.

15 comments:

  1. Or could it be that these documentary filmmakers set out to show what they already believed? That, of course, has never happened before. . .

    As I've pointed out elsewhere, the cartels are reported as using FN FiveseveNs and AK-47s. Those are made in other countries. The cartels are reported as using fully automatic weapons. They don't get those from American gun shops or private citizens.

    Part of critical thinking is not believing everything that you're told.

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  2. In addition, if there were any truth in this claim, the Mexican government could stop it any time it wanted. Move the Mexican Army to the northern border and search everything that crosses. That would stop a number of northward flows, though.

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  3. " Juarez is across the border from El Paso, Texas. The two cities are considered one of the largest bi-national metropolitan areas."

    Yet one city has supposed "gun control"--almost a total ban and is awash in violence while the other, with almost no gun control and plenty of gun availability is considered one of the safest cities of its size. I wonder why that is?

    If you are going to say that Juarez has high violence because of guns flowing from Texas, then why do you not see a higher crime rate where there are fewer controls?

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  4. More propaganda from the anti-rights establishment.
    I spent several weeks in Juarez, Mexico, ground zero for the Mexican drug war.

    Interesting note here. ElPaso, TX, with it's "loose gun laws" has a substantially lower violent crime rate than Baltimore, MD, with its stringent gun laws.

    From Crossing the U.S.-Mexico border
    The guns? Most of them are smuggled into Mexico from the U.S.
    Yeah, 12% is not most. Most of the smuggled firearms in MX are smuggled in from their Southern border.

    The firepower for this mayhem -- assault pistols and rifles, semi-automatics of every description, even 50-caliber machine guns and light artillery -- is generally walked or driven across the U.S.-Mexico border

    I was unaware that lax gun laws in the US would allow me to buy "50-caliber machine guns and light artillery". I'll have to start stocking up, but first I'll have to get a Battleship to mount this 50-Caliber on.

    Yep, just more rights-hating propaganda.

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    1. You have some credible sources for that 12% figure, B3?

      Because multiple sources in the documentary, from both sides of the border put the number of firearms smuggled in from the U.S. at between 87% and 96%, depending on when and where you check.

      I'm guessing that the 50 cal stuff is from people in the Mexican army dealing weapons, which may have originated in the U.S., at least some of them. We have people in our military who do the same thing, but I suspect the money is even more corrupting south of the border. The estimated traffic into Mexico was 2,000 illegal firearms from the U.S. EVERY DAY.

      And the fraction from the failed Fast and Furious fiasco of the ATF, a tiny fraction of the total going over the border from the U.S. to Mexico.

      I'm not surprised if it is correct - I haven't fact checked you on the Baltimare versus El Paso stats, but it wouldn't surprise me to find that most of the trouble in that bi-national metro area was in Mexico. The lax gun laws mean the guns aren't slowing down enough to do much damage while still in Texas. The laxness of the border was demonstrable in the documentary, of traffic going from the U.S. into Mexico.

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    2. Two thousand guns a day? That's 730,000 a year. I've seen estimates that some three or four million guns are manufactured in this country per annum. Do you seriously believe that about a quarter of those go south? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not more extraordinary claims.

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    3. I've documented the 12% here during a back-n-forth with mikeb. The latest information we have is from 2008. Basically, there were about 28,000 firearms recovered by MX authorities, 4,000 were submitted to e-trace, 3,480 came back as being sold in the US. The 90% number came from the traced firearms (not the total recovered) and was rounded up from 87%. To simplify it, 87% of traced firearms came from the US. Most of the firearms found in MX are not traced, because of markings on the firearms indicate that is was a government issued firearm, or obviously came from a different country. During this same period, ATF acknowledged that they (and MX officials) lost track of about 500 firearms during one of the operation "gun walker" programs (there were several programs conducted under this operation).

      Baltimore (pop. 639,929) violent crime rate 1455.62
      El Paso (pop. 624,322)violent crime rate 458.5

      Now, for the real SHOCKER
      Baltimore murder rate: 34.84
      El Paso murder rate: 0.8
      This info is from 2010 FBI UCR, I think it's table 8

      dog gone, believe it or not, when I give you statistics on crime, it's the absolute truth (barring and typo's on my part). I may round the decimal points, but I don't fudge the numbers or data.

      the 50 cal stuff
      Part of my response to that was tongue in cheek. A 50 cal is a cannon that weighs several thousand pounds and can be found on battleships (it's got a 16 inch bore and about 65 feet long. A .50 Cal machine gun is a crew operated weapon that is usually mounted on a vehicle, takes training to use and weighs a couple of hundred pounds. What I saw in the video was a .50 cal riffle, which is shoulder fired and usually mounted on a tripod or bipod.

      the fraction from the failed Fast and Furious fiasco
      let's see, 3500 firearms from US, F&F sent (what we have now found out) 2,500, I'd say that would have been a BIG fraction. But, F&F was in 2009/2010 so we don't know what the effect of F&F had on the number of recovered and traceable firearms, yet.

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  5. The problem isn't guns, it's drug laws.
    orlin sellers

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    1. The proble IS the guns AND the drug laws. There wouldn't be effective drug cartels OR the levels of gun violence without both.

      Don't be so stupid, or disingenuous - to use the kind word for dishonest - about the reality just to humor your fetish object attachment.

      We should legalize and regulate hell out of marijuana, including requiring some of the chemicals in it that create the problems being reduced. Like the levels of nicotine in tobacco, or the kind and quantity of alcohol in beverages, there is a lot that chan be tailored to legal standards, if we so choose -- and a helluva lot of potential revenue as well.

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    2. Now you want to tinker with tobacco and alcohol? Is there anything that you are willing to leave alone?

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    3. Part of the problem is drug laws, and another part is gun availability.

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  6. DG, breaking down your response can be summed up in one word, you want to use FORCE. Force by the government boils down to being forced at the point of a gun with the threat of imprisonment or death.
    orlin sellers

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  7. So let me see if I understand all of this:

    Mexico makes guns illegal and criminals ignore those laws and commit other crimes involving drugs and violence. So since the products are legal in the U.S. and we are not using them to commit other crimes involving drugs and violence on the same scale as the Mexicans are, the solution is to make our guns illegal here.

    What part of any of that makes sense?

    Here is the real problem. Mexico's retarded president can't control crime in his third world cesspool so he is going to cry that it is our fault when it clearly is not. More liberal blame games.

    So if we tighten our gun laws up in the US and it does absolutely nothing to stop crime in a foreign country, then what? Tighten them up some more because it obviously isn't working?

    No thanks. I will never ever ever ever ever support changing one single solitary gun law in the US because Mexico is a breeding pit for corruption and crime.

    We're done here. Mexico has to get their own shit together. They can start by getting rid of that idiot of a president and his entire corrupt government and maybe start patrolling their own borders.

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  8. Third world math:

    GUN CONTROL + MEXICO = FAIL

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  9. Wanna solve the problem guns and drugs, use the US military to close the border to traffic within 10 miles of the border north or south bound on the EFF-ing MEXICAN SIDE!!!!!!!

    Mexico is a failed state and cannot do this because they are unwilling and unable.....

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