U.S.A. –(Ammoland.com)- “As immigrants flow across US border, American guns go south,” the Associated Press claims. “While the flow of drugs and immigrants into the U.S. has been well-documented for decades and become a regular part of the political debate, what is often overlooked is how gangs and drug cartels exploit weaknesses at the border to smuggle guns from the U.S. into Latin America.”
Overlooked by whom? Oh, yeah, that would be by the Associated Press.
They were the ones that decided Operation Fast and Furious “gunwalking” to Mexico did not merit being included in the top news stories of 2011. Having the government’s role exposed by whistleblowing ATF agents didn’t exactly support the narrative the administration and supportive media were trying to create—that “lax U.S. gun laws,” specifically the legality of so-called “assault weapons,” were responsible for the cartel terror. And if the American people couldn’t be convinced with fake percentages, well, there are ways to make sure guns traceable to U.S. gun stores can show up next to bodies in Mexico.
Except two showed up next to slain Border Patrol agent Brian Terry on our side of the border, word got out that guns were being “walked” to “pad statistics” and the rest is as-yet unresolved history, although some of us are still trying.
“A 2013 report by the University of San Diego says the number of firearms smuggled from the United States was so significant that nearly half of American gun dealers rely on that business to stay afloat,” the AP “report” continues. “On average, an estimated 253,000 firearms each year are purchased in the United States expressly to be sent to Mexico, the report said, the vast majority of the sales originating in the border states of California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.”
We’ve no doubt seen these academic assertions confirmed in the real world by closing down all those regularly inspected and audited FFLs who relied on risking their livelihoods and their liberty on criminal activity to keep their doors open. Right? Or is AP instead admitting that the one infringement the Obama administration managed to impose during the time it was stonewalling Congress, the four border state multiple semiautomatic long gun transfer reporting requirement, is further evidence that “gun control” doesn’t work?
It’s not like we have evidence that real cartel firepower, including automatic weapons, ordnance, grenades and the like, are often obtained from Mexican authorities or coming up from its southern border. Do we? (And disregarding that AP reported on that last one.)
Curiously, the go-to guy AP went to for ATF input was retired agent Bernard Zapor, who made the profitability of smuggling guns south of the border sound lucrative enough to make AP’s case for them. The guy knows something about gun smuggling—he was in charge of the St. Paul Field Division when “Operation Fearless” resulted in an agent’s guns and a machine gun being stolen.
What AP is doing here is reminiscent of the line attributed to baseball legend Yogi Berra:
It’s deja vu all over again.
This is the same pattern of buildup and accusations that were leveled the first go-‘round, when the gun-grabbers went looking for and inventing pretexts to ban freedom rifles. The government got caught with enabling and encouraging gunwalking, but nobody’s paying attention to that anymore. The media has essentially convinced a critical mass that all we’re talking about is a “botched gun sting” so it’s time to dust off the old lies again and reintroduce them to a new audience.
Tellingly, the same “progressive” subversives complaining about how easy it is to send guns south across the border then turn around and demand the borders be open. Then they smear anyone who says we ought to stop unknown (and unvetted) “migrants” from coming in and staying here as a xenophobe and a racist.
They’ll be happy to know the Associated Press supports them, and no longer allows “hateful” terms like “illegal immigrant” to be used in its “reports.”
NOTE: Many of the links used in this report are for old Gun Rights Examiner articles from a site that has since been deactivated. As such, in order to retrieve them, Internet Archive/Wayback Machine links were referenced, so don’t be surprised if load times are slow.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.
In addition to being a field editor/columnist at GUNS Magazine and associate editor for Oath Keepers, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
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