...raised by this story:
A federal campaign to stop the smuggling of high-powered guns to Mexico is too narrowly focused on small-time gun runners and not the larger organizations suspected of arming Mexico's increasingly violent drug cartels, the Justice Department's inspector general said Tuesday.
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Authorities in both countries say guns smuggled from the U.S. — bought largely in Texas and Arizona — are the largest supply of weapons used by the cartels. The ATF does not release estimates of how many guns seized by Mexican authorities are traced back to the U.S. because the numbers have become too politicized.So we're just supposed to take the Mexican authorities' word for it that the United States' border state gun dealers are the cartels' largest suppliers? Even though, as David Codrea reported here, serial numbers (if there are any) and such for only a small fraction of guns -- as in perhaps ONE PERCENT, if that -- seized from the cartels are even submitted for tracing? The numbers are too politicized? I'd bet they don't release those numbers because they're not anywhere near accurate. At least I'd hope that's the case, but one never really knows. And we see that no one really knows how many cartel weapons are actually coming from the United States, either. I'd love to see how many of those warehoused weapons are select-fire and don't have serial numbers. (As you all probably know, if you get caught with one of those types of weapons in the United States, you get ten years in jail and a $250,000 fine and get stripped of your right to arms.) But I'm sure we'll never find out.
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