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#1
03-22-2009, 09:23 PM
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We got a close border but not close enough IMO. It is harder to smuggle guns to Mexico from the USA then from other Latin countries. Mexico southern border is wide open, anything to everything comes from the South.
It doesn't matter if it is a straw purchases or not the serial number will trace all the way back to the original manufacture. The ATF will know who was the buyer and who was the seller. If most of the arms came from straw buyers in the USA then the ATF would know, yes? Yet there is only one person that was taken to court and the judge threw the case out. It does not take much time to manufacture a weapon. You do not need a education. Ten years old kids in third world countries are manufacturing firearms in their hunt with basic tools. If these kids can do it I bet those thugs can. It is cheaper and safer for drug dealers to manufacture firearms then to smuggle it into the country from the USA. All they need is a $1,000 milling machine. Put a computer on it, hire a kid to feed the machine, and you'll be pumping out firearms 24/7. Firearms are very very simple machine. The problem is most Americans are too dumb or lazy to understand this. 16" barrel is the standard. Everyone use them including the military and LEO. You can't said the 16" barrel is made for civilians only because that's not true. The US Marine use 20" barrels so if you see a 20" barrel AR15 use by drug thugs can you said it came from the US Marines? All I'm saying it is a moot point to even mention barrel length. 
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#2
03-22-2009, 11:22 PM
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Barrel lenghth is important as m855 is supposed to penetrate then break apart for it's wounding power, and for the necessary velocity a mininum barrel length of 16 inches is need. That's why m4s suck. They seriously could add 1.5inches of barrel onto the m4 and room clear just as good.
As to the m16 use in the army, my friend was issued an a2 in the army and put on a collapsible stock. Basically the same gun as an a4 at that point.
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#3
03-23-2009, 04:56 AM
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Also, you aren't distinguishing between FFLs and individuals who buy from them, and then re-sell the guns. Quote:
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So, no, barrel length is not a moot point when we're talking about AR carbines. If you see an M4gery-type rifle with a 16" barrel (as most of the guns in that picture have), it's safe to assume that it's a civilian model that started out in an American gun store.
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#4
03-23-2009, 05:08 AM
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By the way, it's very well known that terrorist groups have bought guns from the U.S., from FFLs. In the 1970s and early-80s, the Provisional IRA used to buy AR-15s and AR-18s (both of which they called "Armalites") over here - they had supporters in the U.S. who bought the guns for them and sent them by boat. In the 1990s, the IRA also bought Barrett M82s and M90s from the U.S., same method. And most of the guns they bought were civilian semi-auto models, purchased at gun stores. I've read interviews with IRA gun runners where they specifically stated that this was what they did.
My point being, if an Irish terrorist group bought guns in the U.S. from across the Atlantic, why wouldn't Mexican cartels (who live right next door to us) do the same thing?
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#5
03-24-2009, 04:25 AM
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No carbines doesn't mean it is made for civilians. All it means is a 16" barrel or less. Law Enforcement, military, and civilians all use carbines. It's a moot point. If you don't believe me go to a gun board and ask.
How is manufacturing your own weapons cost less? Well, if an AK cost $500 each, the cost to smuggle the weapon into Mexico, danger of getting arrested, and fees for the buyers. Which is cost effective, produce it in Mexico/Latin America for $50 each or buy it from the USA? If you go to Youtube you will find many videos where drug gangs use fully automatic weapons against the police. Those weapons didn't came from the USA. If the serial number is grind off how can they said it came for the USA? If you bought a gun from a FFL it is log into the book. Then you sell it to a private individual it, it doesn't log into the book. That is correct. However, what the Mexicans are saying is that ten of thousands of arms are coming to their country from the USA. That means they needs ten of thousands of straw buyers to not be trace back. Do you think out of those straw buyers that none of them would rat on the Mexicans? If one straw buyer bought over 1000 guns and all of them landed in Mexico, would that be easy to find out by the ATF? Disregard the propaganda in the video. Notice the primitive tools these kids use to make firearms? Making firearms isn't hard. It's very simple. American kids graduate out of high school without any trade skills whatsoever. Hence you got a lot of people thinking that firearms needs a magic wand and a clean room to produce. There are many videos floating around the net. This video is well known, tho. http://rpginn.com/index.php?option=c...=365&Itemid=39 Don't me started with Yeman. Yeman has the largest ratio of gun per person in the world. Every villages produce their own weapons. Last edited by jdun; 03-24-2009 at 04:41 AM.
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#6
03-24-2009, 06:05 AM
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MT2008,
While yes the IRA did get a fair number of assault rifles and those two Barrets from american Sympathisers the bulk of their weapons came from Nations that were unfriendly to the US. I am talking about thousands of G-3A3 battle rifles from Lybia and according to the IRA itself surface to air missiles and metric tons of Semtex. The US is the worlds largest legitimate arms dealer in the world. We literally arm entire countries with our weapons. After we legitamatly deliver them to a forign country we are no longer in control of those weapons. The second Largest weapons dealer legitimatly and largest illegitamate arms dealer is China. Literally the Chinese have been caught trying to sneak entire semi-trucks filled with Military hardware into Mexico. I'm not talking underfolder AK varients and 100 round drums but Mortars, RPGs and the like. As far as Yemen goes, It's a horrible little country at times and for about a ten year period people I know were jumping the border to let the locals know that training and harboring terrorists was a no no. The Ironic thing is that among my family the only person to be shot in the last 50 years was a civilian on the Saudi/Yemen border.
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#7
03-25-2009, 02:47 AM
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Qaddafi gave them thousands of East German and Romanian-made AKMs (in fact, I think the IRA received more AKs than they had guerrillas to use them), plus RPG-7s, DShKs, SA-7s, flamethrowers, FN MAGs, and a whole bunch of "Wonder Nines" (mostly Taurus PT92s). But before Qaddafi started sending them weapons, the IRA relied upon Irish-Americans to buy them weapons. Some of the "Armalites" in the IRA's possession were actually M16A1s stolen from the U.S. Army (some M60s, too), but most were AR-15s and AR-18s from American gun stores. I think they may have also received some HK91s and Mini-14s (an IRA gun runner mentioned this in his interview, but the shipment he was referring to got intercepted, so maybe those didn't reach the Provos). Note also that since the American and Libyan pipelines were closed down, the splinter IRA factions have had little luck buying more weaponry. They bought some stuff on the black market in the former Yugoslavia and Czech Republic, but it's been much harder without a source as steady as Qaddafi or the Irish-American community. Quote:
But right now, it does seem that many of the guns being confiscated in Mexico are the same types that are available (in some cases, design for) on the American civilian market. Saying this does not mean endorsing gun control; it is simply a reality that it does us no good to deny. Last edited by MT2008; 03-25-2009 at 02:51 AM.
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#8
03-26-2009, 04:40 PM
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If anyone's curious, you can read this article written by the research firm where I used to be an intern:
Mexico: Dynamics of the Gun Trade October 24, 2007 | 1547 GMT By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart The number of drug-related killings in Mexico in 2007 already has surpassed 2,000, an increase of 300 over the same period last year, according to statistics reported by Mexican media outlets. Moreover, sources familiar with the issue say police officials in some jurisdictions have been purposely underreporting drug-related homicides, suggesting that the real body count is even higher. In addition to the Mexican drug cartels that engage in torture and killings (at times involving beheadings), armed criminal gangs are notorious kidnappers — prompting some to call Mexico the “kidnapping capital of the world.” This has resulted in a boom for armored car manufacturers and security companies, given that most wealthy people living in the country own armored vehicles, and many employ executive protection teams to provide security for themselves, their families and their homes. Additionally, heavily armed criminal gangs regularly commit armed robberies, muggings and express kidnappings. The one constant in these violent crimes is guns. Mexico’s robust gun culture stretches back to revolutions, counterrevolutions and revolutionary bandits such as Pancho Villa. Because of this culture, guns are common in Mexico — despite strict gun-control laws and licensing procedures. This demand for guns has created an illicit market that not only is intimately related to the U.S. market for illegal narcotics but also, in many ways, mirrors the dynamics of that market. Drugs flow north and guns flow south — resulting in handsome profits for those willing to run the risks. Mexican Laws Similar to the U.S. Constitution, the 1917 Mexican Constitution guarantees Mexico’s inhabitants the right to have “arms of any kind in their possession for their protection and legitimate defense.” However, the constitution includes many caveats on private citizens’ ownership of guns, prohibiting those “expressly forbidden by law” and those “the nation may reserve for the exclusive use of the army, navy or national guard.” Furthermore, Mexican law calls for long prison terms for violators. Mexico, then, has some of the world’s strictest gun-control laws — making guns difficult to obtain legally. Average citizens who want to purchase guns for self-defense or recreational purposes must first get approval from the government. Then, because there are no private-sector gun stores in the country, they must buy weapons through the Defense Department’s Arms and Ammunition Marketing Division (UCAM). In accordance with Mexican law, the UCAM carefully limits the calibers of guns it sells. For example, it does not sell handguns larger than a .380 or .38 Special. Also, under Mexican law, popular handguns such as .357 magnum revolvers and 9 mm pistols are exclusively reserved for the armed forces. Regardless of these efforts, the illicit arms market has been thriving for decades — not only because firearm laws are not evenly enforced but also because criminals have found a way to circumvent efforts to stem the flow of guns. Moreover, not all illegal guns are in the hands of cartel members and street criminals. A healthy percentage of them are purchased by affluent Mexicans who are not satisfied with the selection of calibers available through the UCAM. Sources say it is not at all unusual to find Mexicans who own prohibited .357 magnum revolvers or .45 caliber pistols for self-defense against kidnappers and armed robbers. In addition to ballistic considerations, Latin machismo is also a factor — some Mexican men want to own and carry powerful, large-caliber pistols. The Mechanics of the Gun Trade This mixture of the historical Mexican gun culture, machismo, strong desire for guns, lax enforcement of gun laws, official corruption and a raging cartel war has created a high demand for illegal guns. Guns sold on the black market in Mexico can fetch as much as 300 percent of their normal market value — a profit margin similar to that of the cocaine trafficked by the cartels. The laws of economics dictate that where there is a strong demand — and a considerable profit margin — entrepreneurs will devise ways to meet that demand. Of course, the illicit markets are no different from the legitimate economy in this respect, and a number of players have emerged to help supply Mexico’s appetite for illicit weaponry. Millions of Mexicans reside (legally and otherwise) in the United States, and the two countries conduct a staggering amount of commerce (legal and otherwise) across the border. In this context, then, when one considers that there are more gun stores in a typical small town in Texas than there are in all of Mexico City, it should come as no surprise that a large number of the weapons found on the illicit arms market in Mexico originated in the United States. In fact, Mexican officials say that as much as 90 percent of the illegal weapons they seize are of U.S. origin. The most obvious players in the gun trade are the cartels themselves, which not only have the financial resources to buy guns in the United States but also are in a position to receive guns in trade for narcotics from their distribution contacts north of the border. The traditional pattern for cartel operations over the past few decades has been to smuggle drugs north over the border and return with money and guns — many times over the same routes and by the same conveyances. In addition to the problem of the notoriously corrupt Mexican customs officials, efforts to stem the flow of guns into Mexico also have been hampered by technological limitations. For example, until recently, Mexican authorities lacked X-ray equipment to inspect vehicles entering the country, and this inspection capacity still remains limited.
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#9
03-26-2009, 04:41 PM
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The cartels also obtain weapons from contacts along their supply networks in South and Central America, where substantial quantities of military ordnance have been shipped over decades to supply insurgencies and counterinsurgencies. Explosives from domestic Mexican sources also are widely available and are generally less expensive than guns.
Aside from the cartels, other criminal syndicates are dedicated to the arms trade. These groups can range from small mom-and-pop operations involving a few individuals who obtain weapons from family members residing in the United States or Central America to large organizations with complex networks that buy dozens or hundreds of weapons at a time. 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. On Sept. 12, three high-ranking police commanders from Baja California and Baja California Sur states were arrested by U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agents in Phoenix for illegally purchasing weapons at a gun show. (U.S. law prohibits foreigners from buying weapons.) Over the past few years, several Mexican government officials have been arrested on both sides of the border for participating in the arms trade. Although it is illegal for Mexican nationals to buy guns in the United States and for Americans to haul guns to Mexico, entrepreneurs have found a variety of ways to skirt such laws. Perhaps one of the least recognized ploys is plain old document fraud. Fake documents — which are easily obtained along the border — range in quality (and price) from poorly rendered counterfeits to genuine documents obtained with the assistance of corrupt government officials. Using such documents, a Mexican citizen can pose as a U.S. citizen and pass the required background checks to buy guns — unless, that is, the prospective gun buyer was foolish enough to assume the identity of an American with a criminal record. Perhaps the most common way to purchase guns is by using a “straw-man” buyer (sometimes in combination with document fraud). That is, paying a person with a clean record who has legal standing to buy the gun. This also is a tried-and-true tactic used by criminals in the United States who are ineligible to purchase guns due to prior convictions. The “straw man” in these cases often is a girlfriend or other associate who is paid to buy a gun for them. Also, with so many family relations spanning the border, it is easy for a Mexican citizen to ask an American relative to purchase a gun or guns on their behalf. While document fraud and straw-man purchases can be used to bypass the law and fool respectable gun dealers, not all gun dealers are respectable. Some will falsify their sales records in order to sell guns to people they know are not legally permitted to have them — especially if the guns are being sold at a premium price. ATF does conduct audits of gun dealers, but even after a steep decline in the number of federal firearms dealers over the past decade, there still are not enough inspectors to regularly audit the records of the more than 50,000 federal firearms license holders. This lack of oversight and the temptation of easy money cause some dealers to break the law knowingly. Guns also can be obtained for the Mexican black market through theft. The cartels traditionally have tasked groups of young street thugs in the United States with stealing items (such as pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles) for the cartels to use or resell in Mexico. Now, intelligence reports suggest that these thugs have begun to rob gun stores in towns along the border. One such group is the Gulf cartel-related “Zetitas” (little Zetas), which is active in the Texas cities of Houston, Laredo and San Antonio, as well as other places. A cartel connection is suspected when the weapons and ammunition stolen are popular with the cartels, such as assault rifles and FN Five-Seven pistols. The FN Five-Seven and the FN P-90 personal defense weapon shoot a 5.7 x 28 mm round that has been shown to penetrate body armor, as well as vehicle doors and windows. Because of this, they recently have become very popular with cartel enforcers, who have begun to call the weapons matapolicias — police killers. Several police officials have been killed with these guns this year — though officers also have been killed with .357 magnum revolvers, .45-caliber pistols and AK-47- or M-16-style assault rifles. Still, due to the rising popularity of the 5.7 x 28 mm weapons among cartel gunmen, many of these somewhat esoteric (and excellently manufactured) weapons are acquired in the United States and end up south of the border. Any time one of these weapons is connected to a crime on either side of the border, a cartel link should be considered. The gun problem in Mexico is similar to the drug problem in the United States in that it is extremely difficult to reduce the supply of the illicit items without first reducing the demand. Any small reduction in the supply leads to an increase in price, which further stimulates efforts to provide a supply. Therefore, as long as the demand for such weapons persists, people will continue to find creative ways to meet that demand and make a profit. With that demand being fed, at least in part, by drug cartels that are warring for control of drug trafficking routes into the United States, the two problems of drugs and guns will continue to be deeply intertwined.
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#10
03-25-2009, 02:38 AM
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And people are getting arrested for smuggling guns at the border. The image of the Five-Seven I posted was a gun captured in such circumstances. Quote:
Also, as I've said before, I hope you don't assume ALL of the weapons used by the gangs are full-auto? The media may just be reporting it incorrectly. Quote:
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Also, referring to the IRA example: The IRA's chief gun runner in the U.S. said that in the 1970s, he bought 2,500 guns for the IRA. It was 10 years before he got caught. Gun laws are stricter since then in the U.S., and the ATF more alert, but surely you don't think Mexicans might have other ways? Quote:
However, I have seen many pictures of the weapons being confiscated from the drug gangs. Too many of them look like guns that are made specifically for the American civilian market, and their build quality is too perfect to have been built by Mexicans. When I see stuff like Glocks, Five-Sevens, PS90s, AKs with thumbhole stocks, ARs with 16" barrels, I think it's a safe bet that these guns were bought in the U.S. If I were a Mexican drug dealer, that is where I would go to get my guns. It is the most accessible and simplest place to start. Last edited by MT2008; 03-25-2009 at 02:50 AM.
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Hybrid Mode
