We\u2019ve been hearing the quote lately all over the news, from Hillary Clinton and other appointees of the current Administration, that semiautomatic weapons should be banned from good citizens such as those reading this because 90% of the firearms used in drug-related gun crimes in Mexico come from the United States.<\/p>\n
Man, they didn\u2019t have that much manure at the county fair I attended the other night.<\/p>\n
It seems that only 17% of recovered crime guns down there actually originated in the USA. The 90% figure comes from traces done by the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Those traces were requested because the guns in question were made in the USA.\u00a0 \u201cWell, duh\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
I never was good at math, but I did OK in logic class, so let\u2019s look at it from that direction.\u00a0 The nation of Mexico has lawfully imported firearms in huge quantity from its north border neighbor over the course of the 19th through 21st centuries.\u00a0 From the days of the Western Frontier onward, American brands such as Colt, Smith & Wesson, and Winchester have been hugely popular there.\u00a0 The Mexican government has armed its police and its soldiers alike primarily with North American weapons, from the Colt .45 pistol to the same manufacturer\u2019s M16 machine gun.<\/p>\n
Reliable reports tell us that Mexican soldiers are deserting the military in droves, lured by the better paying drug cartels who give them bonuses if they bring Government-issue M16s, pistols, grenades and rocket launchers with them.\u00a0 (Did anyone but Obama appointees seriously believe that smugglers were buying fully automatic weapons, grenades, etc. from gun shops in Tucson and El Paso?) Those deserters now number well into six figures, and that\u2019s before we start asking how many of the notoriously corrupt Mexican police have also diverted weapons to the drug cartels.\u00a0 And there are all those AK47s and similar weapons from Communist bloc countries smuggled into Mexico from elsewhere in Central America, and from South America, and beyond.\u00a0 Among them are obsolete American military weapons shipped to friendly governments for lawful use, and liberated by the drug kings and smugglers for \u201cunintended consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n