Border war Flow of guns to Mexico endangers Texas safety
Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 9:24 am
From today's Houston Chronical
Border war
Flow of guns to Mexico endangers Texas safety
Guns don't kill people. Gangsters kill people. But Mexican narcotraffickers buy Texas guns, and thousands of people die as a result.
No turn of phrase can hide the link between gun sales in Texas and the violence just over the border. If we want Mexico's cartels under control for our own security, we need to halt their incredibly easy access to military-grade weapons on this side of the border.
Last year alone, Mexican authorities confiscated 1,131 Texas guns from drug cartels or their killing fields. Houston was the No. 1 source of these arms. Using "straw buyers" — U.S. citizens without criminal records — narcotraffickers buy weapons, often in bulk, then have them smuggled south to equip private armies.
According to a Houston Chronicle story by Dane Schiller and Dudley Althaus, the U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency traced — in 2007 alone — at least 328 firearms bought in Houston to weapons suppliers for the Gulf drug cartel.
While buying guns is close to impossible in Mexico, consumers in Texas can purchase unlimited quantities of cheap imported assault weapons, or .50-caliber sniper rifles strong enough to shoot down helicopters. The stores peddling these weapons rarely break the law. The problem is there are few laws for them to break.
For most gun buyers, the one hurdle before walking out with a weapon is the federal background check launched in 1994. The Bush administration weakened that system, requiring all records of approved purchases to be purged within 24 hours. This means authorities have no database to find guns that shouldn't have been sold. It also means that the most effective way to trace suspected straw buyers is to wait until a crime is committed.
If Mexican authorities share serial numbers from weapons recovered at crime sites, ATF can track these guns back to the licensed dealers. This limited, passive approach has proven deadly. The agency should be more rigorously identifying those dealers who supply one client with dozens or hundreds of weapons. And the ATF should monitor even more closely retailers whose weapons turn up, again and again, next to corpses in Mexico and Central America.
The narcotraffickers, after all, also supply the drugs to our country — and they control the networks smuggling illegal workers, including slaves, across our border.
So it is in Americans' interest to upgrade our regulation of gun sales. Sensible restrictions on military-grade weapons is not punishment — it's self-preservation. This is why we regulate pesticides and prescription drugs.
Smart regulation of a potentially dangerous consumer product isn't going to hamper law-abiding citizens' constitutional rights. In fact, imported assault rifles were effectively banned (independent of the now-expired federal assault weapons ban) with no ill effects, from 1989 until just eight years ago. But in 2000, the Bush administration began allowing foreign manufacturers to circumvent the law.
The import ban embodied the spirit of the Second Amendment, which cites regulation, as well as the right to bear arms, as part of public security. And Americans still managed to pursue their favorite sports and protect their families from intruders.
With the stroke of a pen, President George W. Bush can restore the ban on imported assault weapons. Using his executive authority, he can instruct ATF to halt the import of these arms — as his father, President George H.W. Bush, did in 1989. This would instantly cut off narcotraffickers' access to their preferred weapon of terror. With a similar goal in mind, Congress can pass pending legislation outlawing deadly .50-caliber sniper rifles.
In the end, only federal laws can choke off narcotraffickers' gun purchases on U.S. soil. But Texas — a first stop for drug smugglers, illegal migrants and other illicit activity — has good reason to make itself a less attractive magnet for criminal gun-buyers.
We can do that by limiting our easy access to assault weapons and other military hardware. Though the right to buy such arms seems an emblem of Texas liberty, in fact it exposes us, our law enforcers and our children to the region's most vicious elements.
Tony Garza, Bush's ambassador to Mexico, was blunt about the connection last week in a speech.
Mexico, Garza said, "would not be the center of cartel activity or experiencing this level of violence, were the United States not the largest consumer of illegal drugs and the main supplier of weapons to the cartels."
Texas is the center of that arms trade. Do we really want to be the place gangsters go when they're planning to kill?
Border war
Flow of guns to Mexico endangers Texas safety
Guns don't kill people. Gangsters kill people. But Mexican narcotraffickers buy Texas guns, and thousands of people die as a result.
No turn of phrase can hide the link between gun sales in Texas and the violence just over the border. If we want Mexico's cartels under control for our own security, we need to halt their incredibly easy access to military-grade weapons on this side of the border.
Last year alone, Mexican authorities confiscated 1,131 Texas guns from drug cartels or their killing fields. Houston was the No. 1 source of these arms. Using "straw buyers" — U.S. citizens without criminal records — narcotraffickers buy weapons, often in bulk, then have them smuggled south to equip private armies.
According to a Houston Chronicle story by Dane Schiller and Dudley Althaus, the U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency traced — in 2007 alone — at least 328 firearms bought in Houston to weapons suppliers for the Gulf drug cartel.
While buying guns is close to impossible in Mexico, consumers in Texas can purchase unlimited quantities of cheap imported assault weapons, or .50-caliber sniper rifles strong enough to shoot down helicopters. The stores peddling these weapons rarely break the law. The problem is there are few laws for them to break.
For most gun buyers, the one hurdle before walking out with a weapon is the federal background check launched in 1994. The Bush administration weakened that system, requiring all records of approved purchases to be purged within 24 hours. This means authorities have no database to find guns that shouldn't have been sold. It also means that the most effective way to trace suspected straw buyers is to wait until a crime is committed.
If Mexican authorities share serial numbers from weapons recovered at crime sites, ATF can track these guns back to the licensed dealers. This limited, passive approach has proven deadly. The agency should be more rigorously identifying those dealers who supply one client with dozens or hundreds of weapons. And the ATF should monitor even more closely retailers whose weapons turn up, again and again, next to corpses in Mexico and Central America.
The narcotraffickers, after all, also supply the drugs to our country — and they control the networks smuggling illegal workers, including slaves, across our border.
So it is in Americans' interest to upgrade our regulation of gun sales. Sensible restrictions on military-grade weapons is not punishment — it's self-preservation. This is why we regulate pesticides and prescription drugs.
Smart regulation of a potentially dangerous consumer product isn't going to hamper law-abiding citizens' constitutional rights. In fact, imported assault rifles were effectively banned (independent of the now-expired federal assault weapons ban) with no ill effects, from 1989 until just eight years ago. But in 2000, the Bush administration began allowing foreign manufacturers to circumvent the law.
The import ban embodied the spirit of the Second Amendment, which cites regulation, as well as the right to bear arms, as part of public security. And Americans still managed to pursue their favorite sports and protect their families from intruders.
With the stroke of a pen, President George W. Bush can restore the ban on imported assault weapons. Using his executive authority, he can instruct ATF to halt the import of these arms — as his father, President George H.W. Bush, did in 1989. This would instantly cut off narcotraffickers' access to their preferred weapon of terror. With a similar goal in mind, Congress can pass pending legislation outlawing deadly .50-caliber sniper rifles.
In the end, only federal laws can choke off narcotraffickers' gun purchases on U.S. soil. But Texas — a first stop for drug smugglers, illegal migrants and other illicit activity — has good reason to make itself a less attractive magnet for criminal gun-buyers.
We can do that by limiting our easy access to assault weapons and other military hardware. Though the right to buy such arms seems an emblem of Texas liberty, in fact it exposes us, our law enforcers and our children to the region's most vicious elements.
Tony Garza, Bush's ambassador to Mexico, was blunt about the connection last week in a speech.
Mexico, Garza said, "would not be the center of cartel activity or experiencing this level of violence, were the United States not the largest consumer of illegal drugs and the main supplier of weapons to the cartels."
Texas is the center of that arms trade. Do we really want to be the place gangsters go when they're planning to kill?
