Mexican Drug War: In 2009, the Justice Department has reported that Mexican drug cartels have infiltrated nearly 200 cities across the United States, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta. Gang-related activity and violence has increased along the U.S. Southwest border region, as US-based gangs act as enforcers for Mexican drug cartels.
Mexicans have a constitutional right to own firearms, but legal purchase from the single Mexican gun shop in Mexico City is extremely difficult. A significant number of firearms that make their way to Mexico come from U.S. gunshops. These are then smuggled into Mexico across the US-Mexico border. Most grenades and rocket-launchers are smuggled through Guatemalan borders or stolen from the Mexican police or military.
The vast majority of the handguns and many of the assault rifles used by the cartels enter Mexico from the United States [via U.S. Government Fast and Furious gun running operation. (empasis mine)]. Consequently, black market firearms are widely available. The most common smuggled firearms include AR-15 and AK-47 type rifles, and FN 5.7 caliber semi-automatic pistols. In 2009, Mexico seized more than 4,400 firearms of the AK-47 and AR-15 types. Grenade launchers are known to have been used against Mexican security forces, and M4 Carbines with M203 grenade launchers have been confiscated. It is believed that some of these high powered weapons and related accessories may have been stolen from U.S. military bases. [source: wikipedia]
It is estimated that 60,000 Mexican civilians, activist and journalist have been killed in the past six years by the Mexican Drug Cartels.
Mexicans have a constitutional right to own firearms, but legal purchase from the single Mexican gun shop in Mexico City is extremely difficult. A significant number of firearms that make their way to Mexico come from U.S. gunshops. These are then smuggled into Mexico across the US-Mexico border. Most grenades and rocket-launchers are smuggled through Guatemalan borders or stolen from the Mexican police or military.
The vast majority of the handguns and many of the assault rifles used by the cartels enter Mexico from the United States [via U.S. Government Fast and Furious gun running operation. (empasis mine)]. Consequently, black market firearms are widely available. The most common smuggled firearms include AR-15 and AK-47 type rifles, and FN 5.7 caliber semi-automatic pistols. In 2009, Mexico seized more than 4,400 firearms of the AK-47 and AR-15 types. Grenade launchers are known to have been used against Mexican security forces, and M4 Carbines with M203 grenade launchers have been confiscated. It is believed that some of these high powered weapons and related accessories may have been stolen from U.S. military bases. [source: wikipedia]
It is estimated that 60,000 Mexican civilians, activist and journalist have been killed in the past six years by the Mexican Drug Cartels.
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The Daily Caller
written by Neil Munro
Tuesday December 18, 2012
Another gun sent to Mexico under the White House’s “Fast and Furious” program has been found beside a murdered Mexican, just as the White House prepares to launch a large-scale political campaign built on the Dec. 14 massacre of 26 Americans in Newtown, Conn.
The dead Mexican, Maria Gamez, was killed in a shootout Nov. 23 shootout between cops and drug-runners. The incident made headlines because a Mexican beauty queen was killed in the exchange of fire. Though Maria Susana Flores Gamez reportedly had a gun in her hand, police said she was likely used as a human shield when the men in the car she was traveling in pushed her out in front of them.
More than 150 Mexicans have been killed or wounded by the Fast and Furious guns, according to Humbert Benitez Trevino, a former attorney general of Mexico.
U.S. officials had allowed the gun — a Romanian-built AK-47-knockoff, dubbed a WASR-10 — to be bought in the U.S. and illegally transported by criminals into Mexico, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley told CBS.
Under the Fast and Furious program, Department of Justice officials allowed more than 1,400 guns to be bought in the U.S. and transported south to drug-gangs, including the murderous Sinaloa Cartel.
Critics say the program was intended by top-level officials to smear U.S. gun-sellers as reckless supporters of the cartels, and boost the administration’s plans for gun-control legislation.
Several mid-level and senior officials in the Justice Department have been fired or quit following GOP-led investigations of the program.
White House officials deny any role in the scandal. Since the scandal broke, the White House hadn’t pusheded gun control.
But following the Dec. 14 massacre of 20 children and six unarmed adults in Newtown, the president decided to focus attention on guns.
There “can’t be an excuse for inaction,” Obama told attendees at a Dec. 16 memorial service for victims of the shooting. “If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown — and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that — then surely we have an obligation to try.”
On Dec. 18, White House spokesman Jay Carney announced that Obama met with Attorney General Eric Holder on Dec. 17 to plan a political campaign against gun-related violence.
Along with Holder, Obama met with the secretaries of the education and of health and human services.
The meeting, Carney said, “underscores the comprehensive way in which the president views this problem.”
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