Liberals Misleading You. Mexican Guns: 17% From USA

Many liberal news sources have been claiming 90% + of drug cartel guns recovered in Mexico are from the USA. Not true.

Here is one example: USA TODAY March 2009

Any person who is open to knowing the truth should review this article from Fox News. It appears the numbers have been twisted to fit the needs of the Liberal MSM (Mainstream Media).

Or, if Fox News is not a source you can keep an open mind with, try this Google search.

I know this posting will not change the minds of many Liberals or gun control fanatics.

That said, if the MSM is willing to misrepresent simple news reporting to fit their own political needs, as a Liberal, how do you decide when they are /are not telling you the truth?

If you watch and believe the Liberal MSM, have you considered their reporting may one day be aimed at one of your rights or liberties?





[edit on 2009/3/4 by Marmota monax]

Your not saying a news organization is using/twisting statistics to further an agenda?

It's been an accepted practice for both sides for a long, long time man. Both teams play the numbers according to what they need them to say.

75% of the people constitute 3/4 of the population is about the only stat I take as a given and even that one could be twisted if need be.

It is all spelled out here.... I wonder if people can see my postings?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by infolurker


I just read your post and it certainly is better presented and researched with a lot more sources and info to back it up.

No offence O.P. but already been said better.

In your defence the search engine returns too many results and sometimes it's difficult to know a topic has been posted before.

reply to post by Marmota monax
Regardless of what Hillary and Holder and Napolitano say, gun shows and gun dealers are NOT responsible for caches of grenades and grenade launchers, anti-tank weapons and machine guns in Mexico.

We've legitimately sold Mexico $billions in military-grade arms for years. These are then sold by corrupt Mexicans to the cartels. State Dept. will never admit it.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

jw



[edit on 4-4-2009 by jdub297]

Wh wouldn't these ALL POWERFUL drug cartels just make their own ammo and guns? The fallacy of these political arguments to try to convince people to ban more guns just can't be taken seriously at all, please someone explain this to the public.

reply to post by bubbabuddha

Why build factories and buy raw materials, when corrupt Mexican soldiers and politicians will sell the stuff to you at discount rates? Simple economics.

Also, fixed manufacturing locations are easy targets, no?

Finally, the U.S. and Mexico must keep up a charade of action for popular support.

If they were serious about stopping the weapons flow, they'd release the serial #s and lot #s on all the confiscated arms and ammo to identify the true sources. To date, neither Mexico nor the U.S. has said word one about the sources.

Action (or, in this case, inaction) speaks louder than words.

The U.S. is aiming for your guns and this is the vehicle to do it.


Deny Ignorance.

jw

Originally posted by OZtracized
reply to post by infolurker

 

I just read your post and it certainly is better presented and researched with a lot more sources and info to back it up.

No offence O.P. but already been said better.

In your defence the search engine returns too many results and sometimes it's difficult to know a topic has been posted before.

reply to post by OZtracized

No offense take, spent only about 20 minutes putting this piece up, no doubt others have done better.

The intent was to get others to review and research same/similar topics themselves.

Originally posted by infolurker
It is all spelled out here.... I wonder if people can see my postings?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Great Post ! Starred and Flagged! Nice in-depth coverage of the topic. Worth a click for other readers.

reply to post by Marmota monax


Not true? Well, not in the way the media are trying to spin it.

But that goes for Fox News too.

All this nonsense about liberal bias in the media. They're just being good little lap dogs and reporting what the Pentagon and White House are telling them to. "Liberal bias", indeed. It is true that gun fairs are not the reason, though.

for what's really going on, you have to look at the specialists - [url=http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2009/03/legal-us-arms-exports-may-be-source-narco-syndicates-rising-firepower]Narconews[/ur l].

The deadliest of the weapons now in the hands of criminal groups in Mexico, particularly along the U.S. border, by any reasonable standard of an analysis of the facts, appear to be getting into that nation through perfectly legal private-sector arms exports, measured in the billions of dollars, and sanctioned by our own State Department. These deadly trade commodities — grenade launchers, explosives and “assault” weapons —are then, in quantities that can fill warehouses, being corruptly transferred to drug trafficking organizations via their reach into the Mexican military and law enforcement agencies, the evidence indicates.

“As in other criminal enterprises in Mexico, such as drug smuggling or kidnapping, it is not unusual to find police officers and military personnel involved in the illegal arms trade,” states an October 2007 report by the for-profit global intelligence group Stratfor, which Barron’s magazine once dubbed the Shadow CIA. “… Over the past few years, several Mexican government officials have been arrested on both sides of the border for participating in the arms trade.”

...That means the total value of defense-related hardware and service exports by private U.S. companies to Mexico tallied nearly $5 billion over the four-year window. And that figure doesn’t even count the $ 700 million in assistance already authorized under the Merida Initiative [Plan Mexico] or any new DCS exports approved for fiscal years 2008 and 2009 [which ends Sept. 30].

So, yes, the US is the major supplier of arms to Mexico, and a significant proportion of those arms end up in cartel hands. Whether they're "traceable" or not, or whether they're used in a crime but the perps actually take them away afterwards, there's no getting away from who's pumping arms into Mexico like there's no tomorrow.

Sorry, tried to fix the link but couldn't.

[edit on 5-4-2009 by rich23]

reply to post by rich23


Your missing the point... MANY of us agree that "Federal" US Arms to the Mexican military are being used to arm the Cartels.... And many of us agree that "some" semi-auto rifles sold by a very "few" unscrupulous "legal" gun dealers end up in Mexico.

What we don't agree on (I think) is the MSM portraying that 90% to 95% of these weapons are coming from these "legal" gun dealers and portraying this as "YOU MUST BAN WEAPONS" in the US and it will solve the problem.

Below are some examples of the BLATANT exaggerations to outright LIES that the MSM is using to make it "appear" that this problem is 100% the fault of our 2nd Amendment rights.

www.cbsnews.com...

"Let me express to you that we've seized in this two years more than 25,000 weapons and guns, and more than 90 percent of them came from United States, and I'm talking from missiles launchers to machine guns and grenades."

When the U.S. enforced the assault weapons ban, only 21 percent of the weapons Mexico seized from traffickers were assault rifles, Eduardo Medina Mora, Mexico's Attorney General said.

Today, it is more than half, and law enforcement officials are paying with their lives - some 800 have been killed in the past two years.

Both Medina Mora and Calderon said the U.S. should aggressively enforce its gun laws and pressure sellers to keep weapons in the hands of law-abiding citizens.

The U.S. State Department said on Friday that U.S.-purchased or stolen weapons account for 95 percent of Mexico's drug related killings, and that Mexican cartels are increasingly carrying out contract killings in the U.S.

Now... read that twice ... what is the "perception"?

The perception is that "during the assault weapons ban in the US (that didn't ban a single AR-15 by the way) that "traffickers somehow had a harder time getting weapons. Blatant Exaggeration. Then the 95% of drug related killings were done with US purchased (OK, Let's be real here, this is meant to insinuate (falsely) that these "purchased" weapons were from legal US dealers NOT the U.S. Govt which armed the Mexican Military and the Zetas and are the majority of weapons the bad guys are now using.) legal firearms.

Mexican cartels often pay U.S. citizens to purchase assault rifles or other guns at gun shops, then sell them to a cartel representative at a U.S. gun show, where registration rules are much less stringent and the gun sale can't be easily traced.

OK, next example... what is implied here? HOW MANY, WHERE? The "perception" here again is that ALL of these weapons are from legal US stores. Another Blatant Exaggeration to say the least.

Now for some REALLY BIG exaggerations (Outright Lies)

LA TIMES
www.latimes.com...

An estimated 97% of the arms used by the Mexican cartels -- including military-grade grenade launchers and assault weapons -- are purchased at sporting goods stores and gun shows on the U.S. side of the border and then smuggled south, according to the Mexican government.

The United States is enabling the bloodshed in Mexico. We have a moral responsibility to stop arming the murderers and kidnappers -- our national security demands it.

Newsweek
www.newsweek.com...

After fierce resistance from the gun lobby and its allies in Congress, Attorney General Eric Holder has dialed back talk about reimposing a federal assault weapons ban to help curb the spiraling violence in Mexico.

As much as 90 percent of the assault weapons and other guns used by Mexican drug cartels are coming from the United States, fueling drug-related violence that is believed to have killed more than 7,000 people since January 2008, according to estimates by Mexican and U.S. law enforcement officials. But the political obstacles to addressing the U.S.-to-Mexico weapons flow are dramatically underscored by Holder's experience in just the last few weeks.

Again, it is "suggested" that these Arms are from your local legal gun stores!
And that somehow re-instating the useless "ban" is going to do anything about Mexican crime. BLATANT EXAGGERATION!

ABC News
U.S. Guns Arming Mexican Drug Gangs; Second Amendment to Blame?
abcnews.go.com...

"It's virtually impossible to buy a firearm in Mexico as a private citizen, so this country is where they come," said Newell. But U.S. efforts to stop the smuggling of tens of thousands of guns to Mexico, including high-powered assault weapons, have been hampered by lenient American gun laws

NY Times
www.nytimes.com...

But A.T.F. officials estimate 90 percent of the weapons recovered in Mexico come from dealers north of the border.

(here they busted an Egyptian gun dealer... good riddance! but again, it appears ALL these nasty guns are from US gun dealers.)

experts.foreignpolicy.com...

There are nearly 7,000 gun shops along the southern U.S. border, about three for every mile. They sell thousands of hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, AK-47s, and "cop killer" guns and bullets that cut through Kevlar body armor. The weapons quickly flow south, again with barely a nod from U.S. Border Patrol.

What? Are you freeking serious? What gun store sells grenades, RPG's, Grenade Launchers, and full auto weapons? (LIES)


Where do they come from then?

www.foxnews.com...

So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of sources:

-- The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.

-- Russian crime organizations. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico.

- South America. During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal Research Division report from the Library of Congress.

-- Asia. According to a 2006 Amnesty International Report, China has provided arms to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chinese assault weapons and Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico.

-- The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.

-- Guatemala. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants, stolen cars, guns and drugs, including most of America's coc aine, along the porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel operating out of Ixcan, a border town.

'These Don't Come From El Paso'

Ed Head, a firearms instructor in Arizona who spent 24 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, recently displayed an array of weapons considered "assault rifles" that are similar to those recovered in Mexico, but are unavailable for sale in the U.S.

"These kinds of guns -- the auto versions of these guns -- they are not coming from El Paso," he said. "They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don't get these guns from the U.S."

No, I do get it. It's just that "liberal bias" thing is irksome, that's all. No, I do understand that it's being pushed as a way to take guns away from US citizens, possibly prior to a REAL NWO crackdown.

I also think that the main point is that the US supplies over a billion dollars worth of arms to Mexico every year that's nothing to do with the over-the-counter gun trade. That's part of what the MSM is trying to disguise. Did you read the Narconews article? I'm sorry I couldn't make it link properly - no matter what I did there was a space in the last "url", rendering it "u rl" and making the link unworkable.

I'll try posting the link again...

here

And here's another quote from the article that might explain where the grenades and grenade launchers are coming from...

Following is a sample of the types of arms shipments approved for export to Mexico through the DCS program during fiscal years 2006 and 2007 alone:

• $3.3 million worth of ammunition and explosives, including ammunition-manufacturing equipment;

• 13,000 nonautomatic and semiautomatic firearms, pistols and revolvers at a total value of $11.6 million;

• 42 grenade launchers valued at $518,531;

• 3,578 explosive projectiles, including grenades, valued at $78,251;

• Various night-vision equipment valued at $963,201.


[Clarification: The figures above are taken from the actual DCS reports, which list the “quantity” and total dollar “value” of various defense articles approved for export. It is possible that the quantity figure listed, in some cases, such as the grenade launchers, represents a unit (or group) composed of more than one weapon.]

[edit on 5-4-2009 by rich23]

Originally posted by bubbabuddha
Wh wouldn't these ALL POWERFUL drug cartels just make their own ammo and guns? The fallacy of these political arguments to try to convince people to ban more guns just can't be taken seriously at all, please someone explain this to the public.

How do we know they are not? They could own the factories in China that are making the weapons. And a lot of weapons made in 3rd world counties are not made in factories but in private homes in small batches. Those people make guns by hand out of scrap matal.

Guns made by hand

Read the narconews link. Part of what's gone to Mexico is the tools necessary to make weapons.

This is a bit OT to the theme of the OP, but I can't let it slide.

This crap about liberal vs conservative stuff has to end. We're all people, with ideas, and arguments for those ideas. It doesn't matter if an idea comes from the mouth of a liberal, a conservative, a drunk, or even a child molester. What's important is the argument -- what's being said. Not who it came from.

Btw, ALL mainstream media lie. CNN/MSNBC/CNBC/FOX all lie. Some do it less than others, and FOX (faux) has gotten a lot better since 2000-2005 (probably because they lost so much credibility after it was exposed virtually everything they told us about Iraq turned out to be a lie.).

As far as Mexico and guns go, I do not see what the big deal is.
A) Guns are legal in the states, by mandate of the constitution, and so they should stay that way, unless amended as such.

B) Taking guns away seems like another form of prohibition: Punish 99% of responsible society for the wrongdoings of a small, unpredictable 1%. Guns can be operated safely, used for protection, used to hunt (for food/sport), as well as act as a deterrent. I do not see any justifiable reason to strip guns away from every man/woman in America, simply because you want gun violence to decline -- that's like banning cars, to stop automobile accidents.

The best way to control guns is through safety training and mandatory education for anybody who purchases a gun. If you can prove to your community that you can handle a firearm safely, responsibly, and do not have a record of violently assaulting people with weapons -- then I see absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be allowed to own one.

Btw, I'm a heathen pagan liberal. Guess I'm the bad guy you're bashing in the OP.

Good thread.

The only thing I suggest is the swapping of the words liberal and democratic...

It is not the LIBERAL's doing this, it is the DEMOCRATS. Bashing an ideology based off of a corrupt political party is not the way to win the game.

It is not conservatives and liberals ruining this country, it is both republicans and democrats.

Where in the "liberal" agenda does it tell people to lie?

I can respect a liberal, but never a democrat.

Same goes for conservatives to republicans.

This is coming from someone in the middle of the spectrum.

So, to all of you who think republicans and democrats will work together anytime soon...get real. All those words mean is backstabber number one, and backstabber number two.

A REAL liberal will not vote democrat, and a REAL conservative will not vote republican. This is after seeing BOTH sides given a chance at "presidency".

Raise the speed limit to 40, people will go 50. Raise it to 50, people will go 60. Raise it to 90, people will go 100. Raise it to 400, people will finally break down and cry.

For those who are not good with analogies...laws will always be broken. Making an anti-gun law will only establish and let more problems to sprout. Only when we fix the actual root of the problem, is when anything will be solved.

Hows the soup???

Sall right... But I think an evil liberal spat in it after they burnt my house down and raped my wife...

Danged liberals!