Los Angeles Times: Renewed 'assault weapons' ban won't help Mexico's war against drug cartels

Howard Nemerov
Austin Gun Rights Examiner

Los Angeles Times: Renewed 'assault weapons' ban won't help Mexico's war against drug cartels
March 18, 8:59 AM

Here is a tale of two stories: One documents the truth and the other media bias, yet both exist within one article.

Fact
The Los Angeles Times reports that Mexican drug cartels acquire military weaponry from international sources and possess trained infantry units, enabling them to successfully attack Mexican police and military.

Narcotics traffickers are acquiring firepower more appropriate to an army -- including grenade launchers and antitank rockets -- and the police are feeling outgunned.

These groups appear to be taking advantage of a robust global black market and porous borders, especially between Mexico and Guatemala. Some of the weapons are left over from the wars that the United States helped fight in Central America...

The enhanced weaponry represents a wide sampling from the international arms bazaar, with grenades and launchers produced by U.S., South Korean, Israeli, Spanish or former Soviet bloc manufacturers. Many had been sold legally to governments, including Mexico's, and then were diverted onto the black market. Some may be sold directly to the traffickers by corrupt elements of national armies, authorities and experts say.

Opposed to Eric Holder's earlier attempt to blame American gun owners for Mexico's problems, this news report tells the truth: Rich drug cartels successfully exploit the international arms market, which is supplied–legally and illegally–by government military markets, not by the civilian arms markets.

Fiction
Before you start celebrating Rush Limbaugh taking over the LA Times, continue reading:

Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semiautomatic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

I have pointed this out in the past, and even brought up the fact that a number of those M16's were the US military's that were lost at Tan Sanut Air Base when the NVA took Saigon.

Go read the rest of Mr. Nemorov's post and while at it, hit the rest of the Gun Right's Examiners out there- the support is needed.

WP