US shipping 2,000 guns a day to Mexico

[Tirod]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/05/ap/national/main20039638.shtml

Well, the think tank that estimates 2,000 guns a day might be a little over the number.

Or, the BATF flat isn't doing anything about it, which I don't believe for a minute.

Let's do the math, 2,000 guns a day is - wait for it - 2,000 straw purchasers with otherwise sterling reputations buying guns at FFL's, then either 1) selling them to a gun smuggler, or 2) IS a gun smuggler.

2,000 times 365 equals 730,000 a year. That's a lot of straw purchasers. Now, if you buy a firearm to resell or give to somebody who isn't legally allowed to possess it, isn't that a felony? And every firearm sold in America has a serial number, right? And the Border Patrol could at least hand over the numbers it actually seizes to the BATF to investigate for prosecution, right?

WHO'S GETTING ARRESTED? I don't see any numbers at all on that. Even at the abysmal rate of less than one gun a day, at least two hundred straw buyers should be sitting in jail waiting for their day in court.

This is precisely the sort of thing being "reported" by the press, and it's not only bad sourcing, it's completely obvious there's a huge disconnect. If Amercians are straw buyers for Mexican gun cartels, it's to everyones benefit to show them on camera, being arrested at work, and sitting in jail

Just one problem - they don't exist. It's a deliberate agenda to demonize guns as the problem, when other methods would be instantly more effective. What won't work is saying guns are the problem, when it's obvious drug money and a lack of morals is the problem. Guns are just tools to force others to bend to the will of the Cartel when money and drugs won't.

Yes, the American press really thinks you will believe them, and not even think about it.

 

[xfyrfiter]

I read that article in our local daily fire starter yesterday, and could not find any truth.

 

[rm23]

Just because there may be 2,000 straw purchases a day doesn't mean there must be 2,000 different straw purchasers.

 

[SharpsDressedMan]

Maybe if they trusted their citizens with a 2nd Amendment type constitutional law, then there wouldn't be such a black market interest in guns, and the citizens down there could protect themselves and rid themselves of thugs.

 

[jcwit]

So maybe we have one strawpurchaser buying 2,000 guns a day? Or is it 2 making 1,000 purchases a day?

Even if its someone making 5 straw purchases thats 400 folks per day and 150,000 per year.

Somehow the numbers just don't quite get it. Seems more than a little far fetched to me.

 

[Shadow 7D]

Maybe it's part of 'Gunrunner' AKA ' project gun walker'
and the AFT is uncrating them and handing them out at the boarder....

 

[Comanche180]

Right, and half of those guns are fully automatice and/or RPGs, which of course every neighbor hood gun store have in inventory. Just ask Mrs Clinton or Mayor Bloomberg.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Or, the BATF flat isn't doing anything about it, which I don't believe for a minute.

Actually, if you look at CBS News reporting of the ATF "Fast and Furious" project, that is exactly what ATF agents allege. They state that ATF purposely allowed sales to suspected straw purchasers - hundreds of AK47s at a time in some cases. One of the rifles was used in the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and finally caused some ATF agents to take their stories to the media.

Having said that, 2,000 guns a day strikes me as way over the top. The Phoenix area ATF that let guns "walk" for over a year through suspicious straw sales that the FFL had alerted them to reported only 1,700-something firearms over a year; but of course that is relying on the info from the same agency that persecuted whistleblowers, denied allegations and in some cases named FFLs who assisted them as defendants in indictments in order to keep them from discusding the Gunwalker scandal.

 

[cheygriz]

I wouldn't have any problems with guns going to Mexico as long as they're equally distributed to both sides!

 

[Carne Frio]

Maybe, we should send all the ATF types, unarmed of course,
down to our friendly neighbor Mexico and have them bring
back all those evils guns. I'll bet even obozzo would approve.

 

[JMusic]

The Mexican mafia is not getting guns off of US dealers that would amount to much. They get their guns and ammo off international dealers.

 

[SharpsDressedMan]

When Mexico alows their law abiding citizens to be armed, they shall have begun the solution to the problem. Their police and military are apparently not enough to stop the criminal element.

 

[jtcimp00]

Their police and military are supposedly part of the problem.
I understand how the ATF might be crooked, but the FFL is ultimately responsible. I wouldn't sell a gun to anyone who was a jerk and the manager backed me up on it every time. I don't understand selling a firearm to someone when there might be the slightest ounce of suspicion.

 

[hso]

That's an extraordinarily large number of firearms during the course of a year that they estimate are moving from US retailers into Mexico.

The logistics of moving that many firearms is very difficult when the border is supposed to be controlled specifically to prevent it.

The number of firearms produced in the US during a year would be depleted if nearly 3/4 of a million guns were leaving our market and going there.

Upon inspection it seems that the estimate is badly off since you couldn't move 3/4 of a million guns across the border with the trivial amount seized and there aren't that many firearms taken out of the US market.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

from the article: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/05/ap/national/main20039638.shtml

March 5, 2011, "AP Enterprise: US push not halting guns to Mexico", (AP) BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP)

A November 2008 study by The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, stated that 2,000 American guns are smuggled into Mexico each day. Compiled by a commission including ex-Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and Thomas Pickering, a former ambassador to Russia and a senior State Department official during the administration of President Bill Clinton, the report was the last comprehensive estimate on the subject, though it did not include information on how that figure was reached.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings_Institution

The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., in the United States. One of Washington's oldest think tanks, Brookings conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in economics, metropolitan policy, governance, foreign policy, and global economy and development. ....
...In 1977, Time Magazine described them as the "nation's pre-eminent liberal think tank."

So if a liberal think tank throws out that figure with no information on how that figure was reached, why should we believe that 2,000 guns a day go from the US to Mexico? 730,000 in one year? A few tests: what are number of guns seized in Mexico actually trace to the US and how many guns are sold each year in the US? 730,000 guns per year from US to Mexico simply does not compute.

Back in 1996, Customs and ATF agents found 2000 full-auto military AK-47 in a shipping container smuggled on Empress Phoenix docked at Oakland. So that could be a source of a "2000 guns a day from the US" meme. I think it is like most figures about guns from liberal think tanks: it is made up to justify their apriori assumptions about gun control.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

I understand how the ATF might be crooked, but the FFL is ultimately responsible. I wouldn't sell a gun to anyone who was a jerk ....

The FFLs were objecting, the ATF was ordering them to cooperate: The ATF controls their licenses. And you see what ATF is doing to ATF agents who are whistleblowers.

 

[Zzyzxx]

Hmmm...
Statistics. Statistics can lie, and liars use statistics.
when someone start qouting numbers, I try to find where the numbers came from and how they were compiled. What is the rank and rating?
Personally, I am of the opinion that most of the guns in Mexico arrived their from Venezuela courtesy of Uncle Hugo.
Any civilian firearms making their way south of the border were more than likely stolen.

I don't see fully automatic AR's being made in the US being directly exported to Mexico unless they were procured for the Mexican government under a Foriegn Military Sales agreement sanctioned by the American government. Just ain't gonna happen!

 

[pyth0n]

Sounds like the brady bunch number inflation game plan.

 

[SpeedAKL]

Given the high rate of turnover from the Mexican military and police - both of which have access to full-auto ARs, H&K G3s, LMGs, etc. - as well as the millions of assault rifles left over from the Cold War in Latin America - one would think that the cartels could get all they needed from the south, not the north. Keep in mind that 90% of guns recovered from the cartels are not submitted by Mexico to the ATF for tracing because they are deemed as having not come from the US. That figure quoted by the AP seems disproportionately high given the total volume of guns sales in the US.

BTW...what the media always fails to mention is that several billion per year in revenue from Americans wanting to medicate their problems away can buy an awful lot of small arms from anywhere around the globe...and not just those sold commercially in the US.

 

[FC]

Sounds to me like Mexico should take a little interest in managing their own borders to me!

Lies, damn lies and statistics...

 

[LKB3rd]

Maybe it's part of 'Gunrunner' AKA ' project gun walker'
and the AFT is uncrating them and handing them out at the boarder....

That would explain why no one is getting arrested.

 

[oneounceload]

I would suspect most of that number to be US Gov't sold guns transported to Mexican Gov't folks that somehow, once across the border, seem to get "diverted" to the wrong people

 

[prickett]

Our paper had an article stating the ATF only captured about "a day's worth" (i.e. their 2000 figure) of illegal guns flowing south over the course of a year.

I think I smell a rat if they claim that many are flowing south, but can only manage to intercept that small a number.

 

[taliv]

if mexico would stop the drug flow coming north across the border, it would also stop the flow of guns south, since there wouldn't be any buyers

 

[Ohio Gun Guy]

Classic Government thinking.....

We have been failing so miserably, lets increase our programs and fail even more......repeat.......repeat.......until debt is massive, continue......