A recent Associated Press article rehashes an old report, based on older data, to tell a convenient story: Americans’ Second Amendment rights are responsible for the violence in Mexico. As we have noted here before, that is not true. There is no new information in this article that we or others have not rebutted before. In fact, the only “news hook†for the article appears to be gun control groups blaming American gun rights for the immigration crisis along the southern border.
No one doubts the serious systemic violence problems in Mexico and Central America. Gangs and drug cartels terrorize innocent civilians and the government struggles with rampant corruption in its attempts to protect its citizens. But to argue that “the U.S. government is essentially exporting gang violence into Latin America with permissive gun laws – which in turn creates an immigration crisis along the border,†is ridiculous.
The truth is, American gun companies cannot export firearms into Mexico for commercial sale. With State Department approval, some transactions with the country’s military and law enforcement branches are permissible, but no guns are being legally sold into the hands of gangs. The firearms that end up in the hands of criminals originate from the theft or illegal straw purchase of firearms from law-abiding U.S. retailers or from the Mexican government. Some enter criminal circles when the U.S. government sells firearms to the Mexican government, and then Mexican soldiers defect to work for drug cartels.
Sure, there are exceptions to this, such as the Obama Administration’s Fast and Furious operation, during which the government allowed firearms to cross the border knowingly and illegally. But as we have analyzed here before, nearly 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico originated from OUTSIDE of the U.S. Of the small percentage that can be traced to the U.S., many did not come from federally licensed firearms retailers. In 2009, in response to concerns over the violence in Mexico, the ATF conducted more than 2,000 inspections of firearms retailers in Texas and Arizona. These inspections did not result in a single dealer being charged with a crime.
https://dailycaller.com/2018/10/02/new-slant-on-old-story-blame-american-gun-rights-for-immigration-crisis/
