U.S. Is Arms Bazaar for Mexican Cartels

[babylonsister]

U.S. Is Arms Bazaar for Mexican Cartels

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: February 25, 2009


PHOENIX — The Mexican agents who moved in on a safe house full of drug dealers last May were not prepared for the fire power that greeted them.

When the shooting was over, eight agents were dead. Among the guns the police recovered was an assault rifle traced back across the border to a dingy gun store here called X-Caliber Guns.

Now, the owner, George Iknadosian, will go on trial on charges he sold hundreds of weapons, mostly AK-47 rifles, to smugglers, knowing they would send them to a drug cartel in the western state of Sinaloa. The guns helped fuel the gang warfare in which more than 6,000 Mexicans died last year.

Mexican authorities have long complained that American gun dealers are arming the cartels. This case is the most prominent prosecution of an American gun dealer since the United States promised Mexico two years ago it would clamp down on the smuggling of weapons across the border. It also offers a rare glimpse of how weapons delivered to American gun dealers are being moved into Mexico and wielded in horrific crimes.

“We had a direct pipeline from Iknadosian to the Sinaloa cartel,” said Thomas G. Mangan, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Phoenix.

Drug gangs seek out guns in the United States because the gun-control laws are far tougher in Mexico. Mexican civilians must get approval from the military to buy guns and they cannot own large-caliber rifles or high-powered pistols, which are considered military weapons.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/us/26borders.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

[davepc]

1. Untill the War on Drugs end all the gun laws in the world wont stop the Cartels.

The U.S., with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, consumes more than half of the world’s drugs; most of the marijuana and methamphetamine, much of the heroin, and 90 percent of the cocaine comes from or through Mexico. “U.S. consumers are already financing this war,” Medina Mora tells me, “only it’s on the wrong side.”

...

Mexico has no gun-tracing system of its own, so it relies on the A.T.F., to whom it sends between 3,000 and 7,000 trace requests each year. A special Mexican federal police unit has been set up to investigate gun trafficking, but according to people who study Mexican law enforcement, the country has a long-standing, intense aversion to conducting serious investigations, and the main branches of the federal police are constantly at loggerheads. One American agent working on the gun problem in Mexico City says, “They don’t have the skills, they don’t have the knowledge, and they don’t have the training. They want us to give them everything on a platter.”

Then there is the corruption, endemic on the local and state levels but common enough in the federal police force as well. In 2005, Mexico’s attorney general reported that one-fifth of the federal force was under investigation. It’s not a black-and-white affair, though. City police loyal to traffickers are known to supply them with guns (and vice versa), but honest cops who work in poor departments also buy guns on the black market for protection. According to the agent in Mexico City, however, even the federal police often don’t report the guns they seize; they either keep them for themselves or, more troubling, resell them to criminal organizations along with such items as uniforms. (Cartel hit men often wear police uniforms, either as a disguise or because they sometimes are the police.) It’s not uncommon for seized guns to end up at new crime scenes later.

...

In 1985, Mexico disbanded the entire Direcciones Federales, the predecessor of the current federal police force, after high-ranking officials were implicated in a D.E.A. agent’s murder. At least twice since then, its head narcotics officers have been tied to cartels, as have members of all three major political parties and, reportedly, at least two presidential families.

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/international-news/portfolio/2008/06/16/Examining-the-US-Mexico-Gun-Trade


The Cartels have their hooks deep into Mexico...as deep as the Cartels in Columbia and the Opium dealers in Afghanistan.

[EFerrari]

2. That was Camarena. Our legal cartels, DEA and CIA, also have their hooks deep

in Latin America.

[babylonsister]

3. I'm still not opposed to trying to stop the cartels from buying

weapons here. The fact that Mexico's laws are more stringent than ours? What's up with that?
Don't people who want to buy guns have to prove citizenship, get scanned on some 'puter, something?

[benEzra]

11. Yes. The problem here is that cartels pay U.S. citizens with clean records

to undergo the background check and fill out the paperwork, and then when those guns are found in Mexico, the fraudulent U.S. purchasers are almost never prosecuted even though it would seem they would be quite easy to convict.

[Bobbieo]

4. Drugs are just one part of what Mexican Drug Cartels are all about.

The bottom line is money - power and control!!! They want to run the country like the Italian Mafia used to do - there is also kidnapping, extortion, blackmailing, torture and murder.

Decriminalizing drug abuse would be a start in the right direction but we have to put a hold on the assault weapons the cartels get from American gun dealers. Assault weapons are the only guns under consideration to being banned. Put an end to the drug cartels in Mexico before we have to stop them over here. They are already moving in.

[Still Sensible]

5. I believe you are right

and even if there were to be decriminalization in the drug world, it's never going to be comprehensive. Could sometime in the future pot be legalized, sure. But there are classes of narcotics that will not be legalized even in my great great grand children's lifetimes. That probably includes coke, heroin and meth.

That is to say, IMO there will always be illegal substances for mafias, gangs and cartels to peddle as part of their repertoire.

If you legalize pot and prostitution there are plenty of other illicit areas for these groups to organize crime around. That said, somehow getting a handle on the availability of arms is important.

I recognize and support the right for law abiding people to have guns. But I do not consider any and every attempt to get a handle on the situation a threat to this right or a step down a slippery slope. I only ask for some common sense on both sides of the question.

[hack89]

7. Why do Americans have to surrender Conditional rights

because of Mexican criminals? Surely there are other ways to prevent the flow of weapons south?

[benEzra]

12. "Assault weapons" are the most popular civilian rifles in the United States.

Most of the long guns the cartels seem to be using in Mexico are military automatic weapons, not U.S.-legal non-automatics, anyway. Most of the U.S. guns flowing south are handguns.

[windoe]

6. Gangsters were literally running this country last 8 years,

armed and supplied gangs in Latin America, Middle East and many other regions.

I am not surprised that criminal networks have been allowed to thrive in the US, as an excuse to beef up domestic police forces. Somehow, someway, we will have our police state. The arms business cares not who dies, as long as $$$ is being made. This stinks to high heaven.

[Bobbieo]

8. Do you ever stop to read what you are writing about? We are discussing the Drug Cartels In Mexico.

The guns, the drugs and the violence. Obviously you do not live in southern border state if you did I think you would be more aware of what is going on down there. This has nothing to do with Bush except he did nothing to try to stop the spread of the violence. Mexico is on the verge of a revolution!!!

I do believe President Obama knows what is going on in Mexico and is trying to do all he can to put the cartels out of business in every way he can. At least there is some hope, now.

[windoe]

9. True you don't know where I live.

I am aware of what is going on. Obama is not a part of this crooked network and he has his hands full for sure.
I feel strongly that the last administrations lax controls on semi automatics and Bush CIA profiteering of the drug war opened the doors for foreign corruption to flourish. I do put a lot of thought into my posts--and I have learned a lot here on DU.

[TheWraith]

10. I have doubts about this story.

By all accounts, the Mexican cartels are using fully-automatic weapons, which are incredibly restricted in the US. The only AK-47s that are legal to sell here are the knockoff semi-automatic kind, which are basically fancy looking hunting rifles. They've also got grenades, which they didn't get legally. So either they're getting most of their weapons from somewhere else, or this guy was already violating about fifteen federal laws even before he made the sale.