Smugglers buy ammunition in Ariz., other border states

[Angelhair]

PHOENIX - Smugglers are turning to Arizona and other Southwest border states to buy ammunition that they then sneak across the border for use by Mexican drug gangs.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told The Arizona Republic that most of the ammunition used by the drug gangs comes from the United States.

Hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition are purchased each year from online retailers, big-box stores and at gun shows in Arizona and other Southwest border states and are smuggled across the border.

Over the past five years, seizures of ammunition at Arizona's six ports of entry along the Mexican border have risen steeply, from 760 rounds in fiscal 2007 to 95,416 in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

That reflects both a stepped-up effort by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to check southbound vehicles for guns and bullets and a rising demand for ammo by drug groups.

One factor that enables the smuggling is the relative ease with which bullets can be bought in the United States. In Mexico, ammunition is strictly regulated, and possession of even a single illegal round can lead to prison.

Under federal law, buyers must be U.S. citizens and have no felony convictions. Anyone over 18 can buy rifle ammunition. Anyone over 21 can buy handgun ammo.

The decision to sell 10, 100 or even 10,000 rounds of ammunition is left up to the individual retailer. Sellers don't have to record the transaction or report the buyer to authorities under federal law.

Joe Agosttini, assistant port director in Nogales, said that before 2009, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents relied on a method called "pulse and surge," which means they ran searches for a limited number of hours at various entry points.

Now, in Nogales, searches are done 24 hours a day, seven days a week at the Dennis DeConcini Port of Entry and 16 hours a day at the Mariposa Port of Entry.

Smugglers buy ammunition in Ariz., other border states

 

[Angelhair]

'Smugglers are turning to Arizona and other Southwest border states to buy ammunition that they then sneak across the border for use by Mexican drug gangs.'

And my question is: where is Mexico in all of this????? Why is it so damn easy to smuggle these guns and ammo across to Mexico??? Could it be because they allow it? Then turn around and blame the USA? Do we blame Mexico for producing a high percent of the drugs? Is it ONLY our job to stop these drugs from coming across? If it is, then it is only fair and stands to reason that Mexico should be held responsible for allowing these guns and ammo to cross into Mexico! Geez, what a concept.

 

[waltky]

Mexican Halloween underscores narco war...

Every day is 'Day of the Dead' in Mexico drug war
Sunday, October 30, 2011 — Nearly two decades after I had left Mexico, I arrived back on Day of the Dead, a colorfully macabre celebration harkening back to the Aztecs but observed on the Catholic All Saints' Day.

El Dia de Los Muertos is when families take picnics to the cemeteries and decorate the graves of departed relatives with marigolds, candles and sugar skulls. The Nov. 2 holiday has always been one of my favorites, I told a friend who met me at the Mexico City airport last year. "Every day is Day of the Dead now," he said flatly. "We have 40,000 days of the dead." He was referring to the number of people who have died in drug violence since President Felipe Calderon took office and launched an offensive against trafficking cartels. Navigating through a more modern and prosperous capital than the one I had left in 1993, he spoke of a country that had made many advances, but that also had become a miasma of savagery. More families were visiting more graves.

The Mexico I left was still governed by the aptly named Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which held onto power for nearly 70 years through a mix of pork barrel politics and vote rigging. Political rhetoric tended toward anti-American. The North American Free Trade Agreement had not been signed yet, so foreign-owned businesses were scarce and imports expensive. With the Internet still in its infancy, most Mexicans got their news from government-subsidized media that focused on presidential activities and public works. There were cartels back then, moving South American cocaine and Mexican marijuana north to feed a voracious U.S. appetite for illegal drugs. And, to be sure, there was violence in the 1990s. The archbishop of Guadalajara was assassinated by drug lords in what was deemed to be "a mistake," and the head of PRI, Luis Donaldo Colossio, was murdered, a case never quite clarified. Armed Zapatista guerrillas sprang out of the jungles of Chiapas to demand that poor and indigenous Mexicans receive their fair share of Mexico's wealth. Yet Mexico was not thought to be particularly violent then. There was no running tally of the dead.

Today, I find the country greatly changed, if sometimes seeming to come full circle. Fair elections brought Calderon's National Action Party to power a decade ago, but now Mexicans appear ready to return the PRI to office. Polls give a stunning double-digit lead to the PRI's presumed candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto, the former governor of the state of Mexico who has yet to define his presidential agenda, particularly regarding drug violence. Like the Aztecs and Spaniards, modern Mexicans have built on the ruins of past generations. Old low-rises along the capital's Paseo de la Reforma have been leveled. The Mexican Stock Exchange, which once stood out of the boulevard like a lone saguaro cactus in the desert, now sits in the shadow of international banks-hotels-office towers. Starbucks cafes on nearly every other block serve as billboards for the globalization of Mexico, while the Mexicanization of Starbucks is evident in the barristas' offer of sugar-coated Pan de Muerto — Bread for the Dead.

Mexican politicians can be openly pro-American at times, and Mexico is truly multinational now, with everything from Costco megastores to Ferrari dealerships. Speckled enamel dishware traditionally used by the poor no longer comes from local factories but from China. Mexico, meanwhile, exports far more manufactured goods than oil, which is the reverse of 20 years ago and a sign of a more developed economy. Free trade in foodstuffs has driven more farmers off the land and into the cities, where there is a noticeably larger middle class, but also more of the so-called "ninis," or "neither nors." They are the youth who neither study nor find legitimate jobs, and may seek work or be pressed into service by drug cartels.

Read more: Every day is 'Day of the Dead' in Mexico drug war - seattlepi.com

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Fast and Furious didn't work so now the Obama Admin will try the ammo route.

Gun grabbers have tried this before and failed. Lets hope they fail again.

 

[waltky]

Granny says fat lotta good it does now...

Top Justice Dept. Official Admits 'Mistake' in Ignoring ATF's 'Unacceptable Tactics'
November 1, 2011 - Hundreds of documents released Monday by the Justice Department show that a high-ranking Obama administration official not only knew about the ATF's botched "gun-walking" operation, he allowed it to continue "without asking key questions," as Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) put it. Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is among those investigating Operation Fast and Furious.

Lanny Breuer, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division, is quoted as expressing "regret" that he didn't tell others--including his boss, Attorney General Eric Holder--about troubling similarities between the Obama administration's "Operation Fast and Furious" and an earlier gun-walking operation called "Wide Receiver," which was launched during the Bush administration.

In a statement released to Politico, Breuer said, "I did not draw a connection between the unacceptable tactics used by the ATF years earlier in Operation Wide Receiver and the allegations made about Operation Fast and Furious, and therefore did not, at that time, alert others within department leadership of any similarities between the two. That was a mistake, and I regret not having done so." Breuer repeated that comment Tuesday as he testified before a Senate Judiciary panel on international organized crime. Breuer reportedly learned about Operation Fast and Furious in April 2010.

Sen. Grassley said he and other investigators will spend the next few days going over 652 pages of documents the Justice Department released on Monday. "At first glance," Grassley said, "the documents indicate that contrary to previous denials by the Justice Department, the criminal division has a great deal of culpability in sweeping the previous Wide Receiver strategy under the rug and then allowing the subsequent Operation Fast and Furious to continue without asking key questions."

Grassley said the documents show Obama administration officials were questioning Operation Wide Receiver at the same time that many of those same officials were being briefed on Operation Fast and Furious. "It begs the question why they didn't ask the same important policy questions about an ongoing case being run out of the same field division," Grassley said.

Source

 

[Mad Scientist]

Fast and Furious didn't work so now the Obama Admin will try the ammo route.

Gun grabbers have tried this before and failed. Lets hope they fail again.

It'll work on people who only pay attention to Football and Kim Kardashian.