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  1. #1
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Legal U.S. gun sales to Mexico arming cartels

    December 6, 2011 8:46 AM PrintText

    Legal U.S. gun sales to Mexico arming cartels

    BySharyl Attkisson

    (CBS News) Selling weapons to Mexico - where cartel violence is out of control - is controversial because so many guns fall into the wrong hands due to incompetence and corruption. The Mexican military recently reported nearly 9,000 police weapons "missing."

    Yet the U.S. has approved the sale of more guns to Mexico in recent years than ever before through a program called "direct commercial sales." It's a program that some say is worse than the highly-criticized "Fast and Furious" gunrunning scandal, where U.S. agents allowed thousands of weapons to pass from the U.S. to Mexican drug cartels.

    CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson discovered that the official tracking all those guns sold through "direct commercial sales" leaves something to be desired.

    One weapon - an AR-15-type semi-automatic rifle - tells the story. In 2006, this same kind of rifle - tracked by serial number - is legally sold by a U.S. manufacturer to the Mexican military.

    Three years later - it's found in a criminal stash in a region wracked by Mexican drug cartel violence.

    That prompted a "sensitive" cable, uncovered by WikiLeaks, dated June 4, 2009, in which the U.S. State Department asked Mexico "how the AR-15" - meant only for the military or police - was "diverted" into criminal hands.

    And, more importantly, where the other rifles from the same shipment went: "Please account for the current location of the 1,030 AR-15 type rifles," reads the cable.

    There's no response in the record.

    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.

    With Mexico in a virtual state of war with its cartels, nobody's tracking how many U.S. guns are ending up with the enemy.

    "I think most Americans are aware that there's a problem in terms of the drug traffickers in Mexico, increases in violence," said Bill Hartung, an arms control advocate with the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. "I don't think they realize that we're sending so many guns there, and that some of them may be diverted to the very cartels that we're trying to get under control."

    The State Department audits only a tiny sample - less than 1 percent of sales - but the results are disturbing: In 2009, more than a quarter (26 percent) of the guns sold to the region that includes Mexico were "diverted" into the wrong hands, or had other "unfavorable" results.

    The National Shooting Sports Foundation's Larry Keane, who speaks for gun manufacturers, said he understands the potential for abuse.

    "There have been 150,000 or more Mexican soldiers defect to go work for the cartels, and I think it's safe to assume that when they defect they take their firearms with them," Keane told CBS News.

    But Keane said the sales help the U.S.

    "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."

    "Do they need better oversight?" asked Attkisson.

    "It's certainly for the State Department and the Mexican government to try to make sure that the cartels don't obtain firearms that way," he replied. "But that's really beyond the control of the industry."

    Mexico is now one of the world's largest purchasers of U.S. guns through direct commercial sales, beating out countries like Iraq. The State Department office that oversees the sales wouldn't agree to an interview. But an official has told Congress their top priority is to advance national security and foreign policy.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500202_162- ... g-cartels/
    Last edited by JohnDoe2; 10-20-2014 at 11:31 AM.
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  2. #2
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    U.S. Arming Mexican Drug Cartels via corrupt Mexican government - U.S. drip feeding guns to cartels




    Published on Jun 2, 2011
    U.S. Arming Mexican Drug Cartels with military-grade assault rifles,
    makes "Project Gun Runner" look like 'humanitarian aid'.



    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqGsGZFvHRE

  3. #3
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    America's Third War: Is the U.S. Arming Mexican Cartels?

    By William La Jeunesse
    Published May 31, 2011FoxNews.com


    If you ever watch video or look at pictures of the drug war in Mexico, you'll notice some pretty heavy weapons. This is a war being waged with rockets and plastic explosives, not pea shooters and Saturday Night Specials. Consider these incidents:

    - A M26A2 fragmentation grenade used against a U.S. Consulate in Mexico in 2008
    - Explosive projectiles and 21 grenades found during a raid in Guadalupe
    - An unexploded grenade and pull ring used to attack a TV station in Monterrey
    - Automatic weapons, including U.S.-made M16s, found at a cartel crime scene in May 2009
    - U.S. military-issued ammunition found in a cartel raid in Reynosa in November 2008

    You can't buy this stuff at a U.S. gun store. So where do the cartels get it? According to leaked diplomatic cables, there are three sources.

    1. U.S. Defense Department shipments to Latin America, known and tracked by the U.S. State Department as "foreign military sales."

    2. Weapons ordered by the Mexican government, tracked by the State Department as "direct commercial sales."

    3. Aging, but plentiful arsenals of military weapon stores in Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

    Even though these facts were well-known by the Obama administration, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder, it blamed much of the violence in Mexico on U.S. gun stores.

    "More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our border," President Obama said in February 2009.

    That was contested, but few listened to gun store owners and former vets like Lynn Kartchner, owner of Allsafe Security, a gun shop in Douglas, Ariz.

    "We in the gun industry knew from Day One the allegations that the preponderance of sales came from gun stores like this one was totally not true," Kartchner said.

    In fact, many of these weapons are getting to Mexico via the U.S. government. Tens of thousands of firearms and explosives are sold legally through the U.S. State Department to the Mexican government. These weapons are then funneled to the traffickers and cartels by corrupt officials within the Mexico Ministry of Defense and local and state police departments.

    According to State Department documents, in 2009 Mexico bought nearly $177 million worth of American-made weapons, exceeding sales to Iraq andAfghanistan. That number includes $20 million in semi- and fully automatic weapons.
    "Most of the M16s were sold legally to the Mexican government and disappeared," Kartchner added.

    State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks confirm that fear. One cable from November 2009 reads, "U.S. law enforcement has fair reason to worry a number of weapons simply disappear... "

    Another from June 2009 says, "Rogue elements of the Guatemalan military are selling weapons to narcos."

    “These are weapons that have been stockpiled either through U.S. aid programs or currently being shipped there under the guise of military support," said a confidential informant in Arizona who has worked for federal agencies such as the FBI, ATF and DEA.
    "The governments and military in those countries realize that the economy is such that they are far better off to push these weapons north and sell them than they are to keep them in their own arsenals and reserves," he said.

    Evidence of that is also contained in the Small Arms Survey. The table shows U.S. government sales of rifles, machine guns and handguns in the hundreds of thousands over a five-year period number.

    And a GAO report from last year details both foreign military and direct commercial sales of arms from 2005 to 2009.

    After looking at a warehouse full of high-powered weapons, allegedly stolen by a corrupt Mexican federal police officer, the informant said it was obvious to him that such weapons did not come from the "mom and pop" gun stores identified by the administration.

    William La Jeunesse joined FOX News Channel (FNC) in March 1998 and currently serves as a Los Angeles-based correspondent.

  4. #4
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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