...as opposed to writing story after story after story on the way things are in the United States?
One guy was an unemployed machinist who lived with his parents, but spent $24,800 in a year at Houston gun stores, snapping up military-style weapons for a Mexican drug cartel.
His accused gun-running associate dropped $42,700 in a year, as did another who spent $27,700 in two months.
Each often shopped at the same stores, according to court records. Ten alleged buyers were indicted and arrested last week, part of an investigation of as many as 23 people who spent $366,400 during a 15-month period that ended in 2007. Two of them, including the machinist, have pleaded guilty.
But the dealers who sold the guns, are not accused of wrongdoing. The law says they did nothing wrong, even if they wondered, for example, why a customer in one pop would pay cash for five civilian variants of the M-16 assault rifle used by the military.
Ooooh, civilian variant of the M-16 assault rifle used by the military. Scary. I bet it can shoot through tank armor and is a danger to aircraft everywhere.
Seriously, though...I guess this is newsworthy in the sense that not many people know that the dealers can decline the sales if they suspect something being amiss, but what they really ought to be looking into is the other half of the equation -- Mexican gun laws, border security, and just how many weapons recovered from the cartels were from the Mexican military. I for one would be quite interested to know just how and why Mexican laws are so strict compared to those of the United States. But I'm guessing we'll never find out about any of that, as it's so much easier to make your friendly local gun dealer look like the bad guy here.
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