A Self-Inflicted Gun Wound

txlibertarian: In England the chavs go around beating people up a la Clockwork Orange. Not the best country to compare to.

atvfrank: Assault weapons are not fully automatic as those are controlled by the National Firearms Act of 1936. I'm surprised in your vitriol that you don't even know the gun laws or the legal definition of an assault weapon? The "assault weapon" is basically the semi-auto version of an assault rifle: magazine, pistol-grip, etc (If the SKS were shorter had a pistol grip it'd probably be an assault weapon.)

The cartels can get weapons through ransacking the stockpiles of weapons that WE shipped to them in the '80s to outfit their armies and death squads. What we can do to help is to send arms control people to set up inventory and control practices, and ship excess inventory or have it destroyed in place. I have no doubts that now that all the Latin American countries have settled down, that we can take back lots of weapons from their militaries to keep it from falling into the hands of the cartels.

The United States is a source of semi-auto weapons for the dealers. I'm sure that every foot soldier has a hand gun, and hand guns are probably bought new from the US. Don't focus on assault weapons people! Hand guns kill people too!

And there's ammo, though ammo is expensive on this side of the border due to shortages.

You people stated 90% of assault weapons in Mexico come from the U.S> Where did you come up with this "fact". Musst be spending to much time in Disney's La LA land. An assault weapon is a fully automatic firing weapon, which has been illegal in the US for over 80 years. Production and control of these weapons is so tightly monitored that one would have to assume that if they were sold in the US to Mexican drug cartels, the Federal Government would have to be involved. What is available to US citizens are "look alike" weapon which do NOT operate in an auto mode. With the billions of dollars the drug cartels have, why would they be buying fake assault weapons in lots of one or two from US gun stores leaving a paper trail, then attemping to smuggle them across the border. It is far easier and cheaper to purchase real assault weapons from the international gun dealers and have them smuggled in by the boatload. It should anger all Americans, not just the NRA, that this false proproganda is not to help Mexico's war with drug cartels, but is manufactured to limit US citizens rights. Recent history shows that when rights that here are covered by the 2nd adminment are lost, soon rights covered by the 1st and 5th are also lost.

The statistics quoted are a lie. Of the guns able to be traced, 80% were found to have come from the US. They could only trace something like 20% of the weapons confiscated. Check your facts. Most of the weapons are coming from Central and Soutn America. You can't buy machine guns without a special permit or grenades at all in a gun store in the US.

Have you ever wondered about the sky rocketinf gun sales after the election. Just go to Chicago and Detroit, you will find out why. Even old ladies carry something. We have raised a bunch of thugs who could not care less about anybody -even their mothers. In Detroit, even dear Rosa Parks was robbed and beaten.
Hey, you better have that thing loaded because these thugs could not care less what happens to you. They have been kown to slice open a pregrent woman-

What the article doesn't mention is that the disingenious 90% figure being cited is for *traced* firearms, ie. guns with serial numbers that officials are able to trace, which only make up 17% of the guns seized by Mexican law enforcements. The remaining 83% of the firearms being seized, in other words, the overwhelming majority of guns the Mexican government is seizing, can't be traced to the US. These are, for example, Chinese AKs, guns the Russian crime syndicates are smuggling in, or guns obtained through the FARC/Tijuana cartel partnership, or even from the 150,000 soldiers who've deserted the Mexican Army, often taking their guns with them.

The estimate is only 7,000 dead? We should be sending weapons across the border by the train-load!! Let the scum continue to clean the gene-pool. It saves our tax dollars from being used for FREE healthcare (which American Citizens CAN'T GET), free housing, free food, free college education, you name it, the illegals get it ALL FOR FREE! To Hell with them!!

Leave our guns alone!!!

Why doesn't Mexico ban assault rifles for themselves?

The author of this article is an idiot. We are definitely the problem but it's got squat to do with guns. This is about American Drug dollars heading south, not rifles. We need to end the drug prohibition. That will defund the cartells and the government of Mexico can go back to disarming its citizenry and harrassing folks.

Rolling this into some BS trumped up reason to ban AMERICANS from having guns in a doomed attempt to keep well funded MEXICAN criminals from being mean? Don't insult my inteligence.

Oh, and to all the folks here talkng about guns for sporting purposes, you're wasting your time and missing the point. Guns are protected in our Constitution not for sporting purposes, but because they'd just had to shoot a bunch of over reaching government types on a power trip and wanted to make sure weretained the option of doing it again if they ever lost control of the government they were building.

The second ammendment is about making sure the state has to deal with a credible threat of armed insurrection from its populace, in the hope that the threat would help keep the state in line and maintain it as the servant of the people rather than their ruler.

If you think that's an obsolete purpose, take a look around you today and ask yourself why a government would want to ban civilians from having weapons. My guess is because they see the commoners as a threat when they're armed. They certainly caused a stir the other day in Az when the protesters showed up armed.

Again ANOTHER news article that ignores the fact that even the ATF said the claim that most of the weapons used in Mexico come from the US is a compleat LIE! Only 90% of TRACEABLE weapons come from the US.... but the catch is, MOST GUNS USED IN MEXICO CANNOT BE TRACED. Either way tho, the vast majority of the assault rifles used in Mexico are fully automatic AK-47's which cannot simply be purchased in the US, and even if you own a Class 3 FFL to buy them... they are very rare in the US and cost several thousdans of dollars. And what about the RPG grenade launchers being used by the cartels? Thoes are NOT coming from the US since you obviouslly cannot buy them here. This article simply quotes the scare tactic "facts" the Obama administration was hoeing they could throw out there and make people go "Oh my god! People are dieing in Mexico from our guns... we need to ban them!". Its not going to work.

The best part tho is the Mexican government is all too happy to try and shift the blame to the US for its own internal crime issues, and seem to take almost no responsability for it themselfs. First of all, even if guns are being smuggled into Mexico from the US, the Mexicans should actually try to stop it. I mean hell, they don't do anything to stop the immigrant and drug smuggling that comes this way... why is the gun smuggling going the other way all our fault? Also, Its no secret that the Mexican police force and army are horribly corrupt, and there are many many reports of Soldiers and police selling their weapons to the cartels... don't see the Mexicans advertising that one do you? Bottom line is the Mexican police force is doing nothing to solve the problem, and are just complaining for the US to ban guns to its own citizens. I wonder what their excuse would be after that when the violence doesn't drop at all.

Oh and one more thing. With all the guns in the US... IF guns were the main problem, wouldn't the US also be a war zone right now? Hell... everyone on my street owns an assault rifle. Are we killing eachother every day? Nope. In fact, Id say this is one of the safest places to live in the world. So its not the guns... its the people and their motives. Even if 90% of the weapons were coming from the US, punishing the US citizens for the actions of Mexican drug lords isn't going to change anything... the drug lords will just buy their weapons from the Mexican governemtn.

Get your story straight!! The only thing that is 90% here is that the story is 90% bullshit!!! The REAL story is that 90% of the firearms SUSPECTED of coming from the US actually are, but they make up about 7% of the total firearms recovered. Even then, most of them were sold to Mexican government agencies, such as the police and military and then have fallen into drug dealers' hands.
In the US Deparment of Justice study, An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, they have shown that the ban did NOTHING to reduce crime in the United States, why should we expect it to do anything in Mexico? Especially since the "assault weapons" they have were obtained from their own Police and Military and not from independent US sellers or traffickers!
As soon as NEWSWEEK decides to actually tell the truth, then we can talk about what to do about it on NEWSWEEK.

Get your story straight!! The only thing that is 90% here is that the story is 90% bullshit!!! The REAL story is that 90% of the firearms SUSPECTED of coming from the US actually are, but they make up about 7% of the total firearms recovered. Even then, most of them were sold to Mexican government agencies, such as the police and military and then have fallen into drug dealers' hands.
In the US Deparment of Justice study, An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, they have shown that the ban did NOTHING to reduce crime in the United States, why should we expect it to do anything in Mexico? Especially since the "assault weapons" they have were obtained from their own Police and Military and not from independent US sellers or traffickers!
As soon as NEWSWEEK decides to actually tell the truth, then we can talk about what to do about it on NEWSWEEK.

Get your story straight!! The only thing that is 90% here is that the story is 90% bullshit!!! The REAL story is that 90% of the firearms SUSPECTED of coming from the US actually are, but they make up about 7% of the total firearms recovered. Even then, most of them were sold to Mexican government agencies, such as the police and military and then have fallen into drug dealers' hands.
In the US Deparment of Justice study, An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, they have shown that the ban did NOTHING to reduce crime in the United States, why should we expect it to do anything in Mexico? Especially since the "assault weapons" they have were obtained from their own Police and Military and not from independent US sellers or traffickers!
As soon as NEWSWEEK decides to actually tell the truth, then we can talk about what to do about it on NEWSWEEK.

Why put a ban on guns going to Mexico?? you say they killed 6000, thats that many that won't come to this country, I think we should give them more guns and we won't have to support them for the rest of their lives.

There's a lot of confusion about "assault" rifles and "semi-automatic" rifles. The latter requries a separate pull of the trigger for each bullet that is fired. The "assault" rifle CAN be fired in semi-automatic mode but is also equiped with some method of fully automatic fire (as long as the trigger is pulled it'll continue to fire bullets). Sem-automatic rifles are as common as oxygen in this country but ANY type of fully automatic weapon requires a Class III license and that's really tough to come by. Semi-automatic rifles are great home defense weapons (but not in ALL situations) and they are great for target shooting and small game hunting. There's really no good reason to ban semi-automatic rifles.

Clue time: The so called "ban" on assault weapons was completely ineffective at anything!

What did it ban? Well for instance, in almost all cases, the gun was never banned..............it was the clip or magazine!
That means that if you had a pre-ban weapon, and there were millions in posession, you could have a clip that held more than 10 bullets! Moreover, when you went to almost any gun store or sporting goods store or even bought online, you were still able to purchase high capacity clips for those guns.................but the kicker is that if you had a post-ban weapon, no one would actually check and though the weapon was post-ban and came with only a 10 shot clip...........you could buy 30-40 shot clips with a lottery chance of ever getting caught!

Now, here is where it get ridiculous. The day that the ban sunsetted, the clip manufacturers put a full court press on selling the overstock of high capacity clips..............cheaply!

So now there are enough high capacity clips in Americans hands to cover the next 200 years sales of weapons!

There is the small importance of the supposed fact that we are a democratic country and shooting sports are the #1 most popular sport in the country, and even the fact that shooting sports are the fastest growing sport in the country!

The ban would never work at doing the things that the clear minority wishes that it would do!