Mexico: U.S. Must Stop Gun Trade At Border
Mexico blames the U.S. for arming the world's most powerful drug cartels, a complaint supported on Friday by a U.S. government report that found nearly all of Mexico's escalating drug killings involved weapons from north of the border.
President Felipe Calderon and his top prosecutor told The Associated Press on Thursday that Mexican police and soldiers are dangerously outgunned because U.S. authorities are failing to stop the smuggling of high-powered weapons into Mexico.
Calderon has complained for two years that the U.S. isn't carrying its weight in the cross-border drug war, despite the fact that American drug users fuel the problem.
"We need to stop the flow of guns and weapons towards Mexico," President Calderon told AP. "Let me express to you that we've seized in this two years more than 25,000 weapons and guns, and more than 90 percent of them came from United States, and I'm talking from missiles launchers to machine guns and grenades."
President Barack Obama's administration is beginning to respond.
On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder promised to enforce a long-ignored ban on importing assault weapons, many of which are re-sold illegally and smuggled into Mexico to resupply the cartels.
Calderon applauded Holder's announcement saying it was the first time in many years that the American government was starting to show more commitment.
When the U.S. enforced the assault weapons ban, only 21 percent of the weapons Mexico seized from traffickers were assault rifles, Eduardo Medina Mora, Mexico's Attorney General said.
Today, it is more than half, and law enforcement officials are paying with their lives - some 800 have been killed in the past two years.
Both Medina Mora and Calderon said the U.S. should aggressively enforce its gun laws and pressure sellers to keep weapons in the hands of law-abiding citizens.
"60 Minutes": The War Next Door
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says every American has a stake in Mexico's war against murderous gangs, and acknowledges that violent drug cartels are now operating in many U.S. cities. Anderson Cooper reports Sunday, March 1.
The U.S. State Department said on Friday that U.S.-purchased or stolen weapons account for 95 percent of Mexico's drug related killings, and that Mexican cartels are increasingly carrying out contract killings in the U.S.
Drug-related killings claimed 6,290 lives last year in Mexico - more than double the 2007 toll. And more than 1,000 have been killed so far this year.
The violence is also spilling into the United States, with a sharp rise in kidnappings in Phoenix and cartels linked to gruesome murders all over the U.S.
Holder announced on Wednesday the Drug Enforcement Administration had rounded up 755 suspected Sinaloa cartel members and seized more than $59 million in drug money in the past 21 months.
Congress is also paying attention.
Lawmakers included $10 million in the economic stimulus package for Project Gunrunner, a federal crackdown on U.S. gun-trafficking networks.
Mexican cartels often pay U.S. citizens to purchase assault rifles or other guns at gun shops, then sell them to a cartel representative at a U.S. gun show, where registration rules are much less stringent and the gun sale can't be easily traced.
The Brookings Institution has estimated that 2,000 guns enter Mexico from the United States every day.
(Two federal police officers carry a box with weapons seized from suspected members of a crime gang after presenting them to the press in Mexico City, Feb. 10, 2009.)
The ATF says more than 7,700 guns sold in America were traced to Mexico last year, up from 3,300 the year before and about 2,100 in 2006.
Cartels turn to the U.S. because Mexico's gun laws are relatively restrictive.
Mexicans must get approval for a gun purchase from the Mexican defense department and are limited to guns with a calibre no higher than the standard .38-calibre.
Larger calibres are considered military weapons and are off-limits to civilians.
Cartels are so easily armed that their hitmen have used assault rifles as if they are disposable, tossing the weapons aside while fleeing assassinations.
Mr. Obama said during his campaign that he respects Americans' Second Amendment right to bear arms, but favors "common sense" gun laws.
Advocates on both sides of the U.S. gun control debate took that to mean new curbs on ownership of assault weapons and background checks at the gun shows that supply much of the cartels' arsenal.
The U.S. actions follow a series of government reports warning that Mexico could melt into lawlessness if something isn't done.
Calderon angrily denied that his country is in danger of becoming a failed state, telling the AP that his government has complete control of Mexican territory.
But Mexico's leaders say they have no choice but to confront the cartels.
Mexico's Economy Secretary Gerardo Ruiz Mateos said this month that if they don't defeat the traffickers, the country's next president could be a drug dealer.
Canada Warns About Mexico Travel
Canada issued an travel advisory Friday warning a surge in drug-related murders in certain areas of Mexico has heightened the risk of visiting the country.
The Foreign Affairs Department has recommended Canadians to particular care when traveling of northern Mexico, especially around the border with the United States.
Cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez are the epicenters of a bloody drug war between Mexico's main cartels.
The Mexican government tripled its military presence in Ciudad Juarez this week.
The deparment warns that firefights between soldiers and drug cartels can occur at any time, and travelers can get caught in the crossfire.
The U.S. State Department recently issued a travel alert for Mexico, and has instructed its diplomats in Mexico not to travel to certain areas unless absolutely necessary.
© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. President Felipe Calderon and his top prosecutor told The Associated Press on Thursday that Mexican police and soldiers are dangerously outgunned because U.S. authorities are failing to stop the smuggling of high-powered weapons into Mexico.
Calderon has complained for two years that the U.S. isn't carrying its weight in the cross-border drug war, despite the fact that American drug users fuel the problem.
"We need to stop the flow of guns and weapons towards Mexico," President Calderon told AP. "Let me express to you that we've seized in this two years more than 25,000 weapons and guns, and more than 90 percent of them came from United States, and I'm talking from missiles launchers to machine guns and grenades."
President Barack Obama's administration is beginning to respond.
On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder promised to enforce a long-ignored ban on importing assault weapons, many of which are re-sold illegally and smuggled into Mexico to resupply the cartels.
Calderon applauded Holder's announcement saying it was the first time in many years that the American government was starting to show more commitment.
When the U.S. enforced the assault weapons ban, only 21 percent of the weapons Mexico seized from traffickers were assault rifles, Eduardo Medina Mora, Mexico's Attorney General said.
Today, it is more than half, and law enforcement officials are paying with their lives - some 800 have been killed in the past two years.
Both Medina Mora and Calderon said the U.S. should aggressively enforce its gun laws and pressure sellers to keep weapons in the hands of law-abiding citizens.
(CBS)
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says every American has a stake in Mexico's war against murderous gangs, and acknowledges that violent drug cartels are now operating in many U.S. cities. Anderson Cooper reports Sunday, March 1.
The U.S. State Department said on Friday that U.S.-purchased or stolen weapons account for 95 percent of Mexico's drug related killings, and that Mexican cartels are increasingly carrying out contract killings in the U.S.
Drug-related killings claimed 6,290 lives last year in Mexico - more than double the 2007 toll. And more than 1,000 have been killed so far this year.
The violence is also spilling into the United States, with a sharp rise in kidnappings in Phoenix and cartels linked to gruesome murders all over the U.S.
Holder announced on Wednesday the Drug Enforcement Administration had rounded up 755 suspected Sinaloa cartel members and seized more than $59 million in drug money in the past 21 months.
Congress is also paying attention.
Lawmakers included $10 million in the economic stimulus package for Project Gunrunner, a federal crackdown on U.S. gun-trafficking networks.
Mexican cartels often pay U.S. citizens to purchase assault rifles or other guns at gun shops, then sell them to a cartel representative at a U.S. gun show, where registration rules are much less stringent and the gun sale can't be easily traced.
The Brookings Institution has estimated that 2,000 guns enter Mexico from the United States every day.
(AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
The ATF says more than 7,700 guns sold in America were traced to Mexico last year, up from 3,300 the year before and about 2,100 in 2006.
Cartels turn to the U.S. because Mexico's gun laws are relatively restrictive.
Mexicans must get approval for a gun purchase from the Mexican defense department and are limited to guns with a calibre no higher than the standard .38-calibre.
Larger calibres are considered military weapons and are off-limits to civilians.
Cartels are so easily armed that their hitmen have used assault rifles as if they are disposable, tossing the weapons aside while fleeing assassinations.
Mr. Obama said during his campaign that he respects Americans' Second Amendment right to bear arms, but favors "common sense" gun laws.
Advocates on both sides of the U.S. gun control debate took that to mean new curbs on ownership of assault weapons and background checks at the gun shows that supply much of the cartels' arsenal.
The U.S. actions follow a series of government reports warning that Mexico could melt into lawlessness if something isn't done.
Calderon angrily denied that his country is in danger of becoming a failed state, telling the AP that his government has complete control of Mexican territory.
But Mexico's leaders say they have no choice but to confront the cartels.
Mexico's Economy Secretary Gerardo Ruiz Mateos said this month that if they don't defeat the traffickers, the country's next president could be a drug dealer.
Canada Warns About Mexico Travel
Canada issued an travel advisory Friday warning a surge in drug-related murders in certain areas of Mexico has heightened the risk of visiting the country.
The Foreign Affairs Department has recommended Canadians to particular care when traveling of northern Mexico, especially around the border with the United States.
Cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez are the epicenters of a bloody drug war between Mexico's main cartels.
The Mexican government tripled its military presence in Ciudad Juarez this week.
The deparment warns that firefights between soldiers and drug cartels can occur at any time, and travelers can get caught in the crossfire.
The U.S. State Department recently issued a travel alert for Mexico, and has instructed its diplomats in Mexico not to travel to certain areas unless absolutely necessary.
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Oh poor Mexico.... and here we see the young wearing skulls and grosquery as fashion and, oh poor us..our culture is being disturbed by...drug merchants...in Mexico.
Our Congress has little credibility in it's war on drugs and if Mexicandrug cartels see a chance to make big bicks off foolish US consumers of narcotics it's our own liberal policies creating conditions for that!
Illegal arms flow to Mexico from all over the world and have for many many years and do note:-- Mexican gun control laws are VERY STRICKT! But effect only Mexicos many LAW ABIDING people .That is the universal problem with gun control laws! They only work up to the point they do not, and criminals decide!
Perhaps that's why the problem. A nation trying to keep order threw gun control. To find it don't and honest citiezens may not legaly protect themselves or families with firearms. Don't it make you wonder who's side the Mexican Government has been on all these years?
His new work depicts a gang of bones like those skeletal remains in scenes from the day of the dead, but they are life size gansters with guns dropping from their withered black skeletal remains. Under these figures ride a stream of consciousness of gang language, horror, in all their lovely graffiti with many veils, like mexican party sreamers, made of the remains of a beautiful culture of peoples who comprise a failed and failing nation. My student carries this mantel on his huge shoulders and is struggeling with this heritage which he and his generation now face. Shame on this nation that it ship guns and god knows what to every hot spot in the world - in every neighborhood in our nation - this mercantile capitalist idea that you can just continue to sell weapons to hurt and angery people is insane and we are now seeing and will see the culmination of this insanity unless Holder and his sheriffs can can be different than the past forty years of gangsters running the Justice Department and nearly everything else - the gun merchants haven't stopped and noone has stopped them.
Maybe the Mexican government should clean up its own house, take responsibility, and not use the cowards way out of blaming some one else for their inadequacies. Even better maybe it is now time to boycott Mexican product, stop travelling their, cease hiring any illegal aliens, and cease giving said illegal aliens any help whatsoever. I do not mind emergency aid, but I do object to education, medical help, jobs, and anything else that will help the illegal alien communities. Experience has shown that a majority want to take not give to American society. They want this country to be like they. That is not a acceptable option. I know of no other country that would allow this to happen. (BTW, for the "your a racist" crowd, may family are legal immigrants, and we maintain family ties overseas.) We did things legally, not illegally, and do not support any illegal behavior!
Bottom line, Mexico, clean-up your house before pointing fingers at others houses! Stop your drug traffickers! Stop giving your people the means to violate US immigration laws! Stop blaming others for your corruption, and the problems that have been created!. You have NO RIGHT to tell me or mine how to live, act, or be, let alone what firearms we can or cannot own. Remember, you are allowing the export of thousands of people, drugs, and violence as a means to avoid or solve your own innate corruption.
1. lets get this straight once and for all by definition an "assault rifle" is a military weapon capable of full automatic fire. Joe Citizen (unless he is rich and willing to jump through the Gov. redtape) will not own an "assault rifle". The AR-15s, AK-47s, etc. that anyone can purchase with the appropriate GOVERNMENT REQUIRED background checks and registration are SEMIAUTOMATIC. This means one pull of the trigger discharges one round, requiring another pull of the trigger to dischage another. They don't spray bullets or discharge uncontrollably like you would like everyone to think.
2. Joe Citizen will not purchase rocket launchers, grenades, machine guns or anything else that falls under the National Firearms Act at a gunshow. These items are HIGHLY REGULATED BY THE GOVERNMENT. The ATF drools at the chance to bust someone for these offenses.
3. The rules for selling firearms at a gunshow are no less stringent than a purchase at a gun store. It requires a GOVERNMENT background check and a FEDERAL REGISTRATION FORM 4473.
4. "The ATF says more than 7,700 guns sold in America were traced to Mexico last year."
I'll believe these numbers when I see the proof. How does the ATF know this info? Do they have the serial numbers for each weapon? If so, then the weapon could be traced back to the buyer which goes back to the FEDERAL REGISTRATION FORM 4473. There is no mention in your "highly investigative piece" of purchasers of these weapons being arrested for straw sales.
WAKE UP PEOPLE. The Government will make up any lies they wish to take your rights away.
CBS, you disgust me as usual, but I expect nothing less.
Posted by lovegetpeace at 11:20 AM : Mar 2, 2009
+ report abuse + permalink
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good luck!
Agreed-Mexico and other countries need to clean up their act and take care of their own problems and people. Although this country sends tens of millions of dollars to Mexico
each year, the problems only become worse over time. The illegal immigrants and drugs continue to flow northward, the money and guns go southward, and the Mexican Government pockets the money the U. S. sends there-Nothing changes. nor improves.
Not only should the U. S. stop the pity for this country, but more importantly, it should also stop American tax dollars from going down to our greedy and corrupt neighbor to the south. The U. S. should no longer support illegal immigrants from Mexico and other countries sends that send illegal immigrants into the U. S. each year, often in uncontrolled and unregulated numbers.
In other words, cut these countries off from U. S. aid until they clean up their act(s).
No wonder, Americans need a Tax Cut and a Stimulus Package.
Yea man, lets concentrate on the suppliers and forget the Super Powerful Demand side of the simple Math equation.