Pubdate: Fri, 27 Feb 2009
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2009 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Referenced: U.S. Is Arms Bazaar For Mexican Cartels 
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09/n000/a033.html

THE DRUG CARTELS' RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS

The hypocrisy grows all too gruesome: The Justice Department 
pronounced the Mexican drug cartels "a national security threat" this 
week, even as American gun dealers along the border were busily 
arming the cartels' murderous gangs. Mexico complains that American 
dealers supplied most of the 20,000 weapons seized last year in drug 
wars in which 6,000 Mexicans died.

A vast arms bazaar is rampant along the four border states, enabled 
by porous to nonexistent American gun laws. Straw buyers can pick up 
three or four high-powered war rifles from one of more than 6,600 
border dealers and hand them off to smugglers. They easily return to 
Mexico, where gun laws are far less permissive.

Licensed dealers routinely recruit buyers with clean criminal records 
to foil weak laws and feed the deadly pipeline, according to a report 
by James C. McKinley Jr. in The Times. The countless unlicensed "gun 
enthusiasts" free to deal battlefield rifles at weekend shows, thanks 
to loophole-ridden laws, are a second source.

The federal government is allowed to only trace weapons used in 
crimes and has no idea of the full scope of the border trade, which 
accounts for 9 out of 10 recovered weapons.

One dealer exploited the lack of federal controls by packing up his 
California shop, where laws were tougher, and moving to the lenient 
Arizona border. He is accused of selling hundreds of AK-47 rifles to 
the cartels before he was finally arrested in a sting by undercover 
agents. He's more the exception. At best, 200 agents work the border 
expanse where gun smugglers operate as a "parade of ants," in the 
words of one frustrated prosecutor.

There should be enormous shame on this side of the border that 
America's addiction to drugs is bolstered by its feckless gun 
controls. Firm federal law is urgently needed if the homicidal 
cartels are to be seriously challenged as a threat to national security. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake