Mexico, Obama, and the Conspiracy Against Your Guns

Being stuffed with liberal Democrats, the Obama administration is hardly a friend to your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.  However, our statist leaders have seemed too busy destroying our economy by regulatory fiat to mess with our guns.

A stunning report from CBS, of all places, reveals this to be an illusion: Not only was our own government determined to restrict American gun ownership, it did so by fraud, deception, international crime, and even aiding and abetting murder.

But first, a little background.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Phony Statistics

It's not news that Mexico is violence-ridden and crime-infested, with vicious druglords massacring the innocent and guilty alike without regard to their nationality.  Our federal government having utterly failed in its responsibility to defend our border, this chaos unavoidably slops over into the United States.

This is not really a new problem: a century ago, General John "Black Jack" Pershing spent several months pursuing Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa across northern Mexico after Villa invaded the United States and burned Columbus, New Mexico.

Back then, America's president placed the blame squarely where it belonged: on Mexican ruffians and bad government.  Today, in contrast, our President blames his universally-guilty party of preference: Americans, and specifically our liberties.  In a joint press conference with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Obama said of the drug conflict:

This war is being waged with guns purchased not here, but in the United States. More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our shared border.

There's no nice way to put this: the President was lying through his teeth and he knew it.  He was referring to an old GAO report claiming that 87% of Mexican guns are American, but let's see what the GAO had to say about their own statistic citing a letter from the Department of Homeland Security on pg 69:

DHS [Department of Homeland Security] officials believe that the 87 percent statistic is misleading as the reference should include the number of weapons that could not be traced (i.e., out of approximately 30,000 weapons seized in Mexico, approximately 4,000 could be traced and 87 percent of those—3,480—originated in the United States.) Numerous problems with the data collection and sample population render this assertion as unreliable.

So instead of 90% of Mexican criminals getting their guns from the United States, it's more like 10% - not nothing, but certainly we aren't the main problem.  This is simple common sense: if you're a Mexican druglord, would you prefer to risk coming to America to buy heavily-regulated firearms in a hostile environment?  Or would you rather just order up a container-load of unmarked Chinese weapons delivered to your door?  The accompanying graph shows the obvious truth.

Nevertheless, 3,480 guns are not trivial; where are they coming from?  The Obama administration has claimed they're supplied by shady American gun dealers, and - surprise! - wants to make legal gun purchases by Americans more difficult in order to stop sales that are already illegal.  Fortunately, the Republican budget blocks these efforts.

Even if Mexican druglords were subsisting off American guns - which they're not - it would be a scandalous affront to restrict American freedoms simply because of foreign criminals.  If our federal government would do its job of protecting the border, this wouldn't even be an issue: if our defenses stopped illegal immigrants going north, stopping illegal guns going south would be easy.

The truth is far worse.  American guns are going to Mexican druglords, not because shady American gun dealers provide them, but because the federal government supplies them.

Iran-Contra, Anyone?

In a news report that should make the hair on your neck stand on end, CBS News tells us:

An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms senior agent assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010, Dodson's job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen.

Surveillance video obtained by CBS News shows suspected drug cartel suppliers carrying boxes of weapons to their cars at a Phoenix gun shop. The long boxes shown in the video being loaded in were AK-47-type assault rifles.

So it turns out ATF not only allowed it - they videotaped it.

This isn't quite as insane as it sounds.  If, like the ATF, you assume that Mexican druglords are getting their guns from America, it makes sense to let them get away with a couple.  You use your spies and secret-squirrels to follow the gun through the chain and up to the druglord, then arrest everybody involved.

Doing this with one gun, or half a dozen, makes perfect sense.  That's not what happened:

One e-mail noted, "958 killed in March 2010 ... most violent month since 2005." The same e-mail notes: "Our subjects purchased 359 firearms during March alone," including "numerous Barrett .50 caliber rifles."  [emphasis added]

Remember, in the entire year of 2008, only 3,480 Mexican criminal guns were proven to come from America.  In one month, our own government intentionally allowed 359 American guns to go to known Mexican criminal gangs.

In other words, if March was typical, our government knowingly provided all American guns that Mexican druglords got - 359 x 12 months = 4308, well over the 3,480 found in 2008.  Then, our same government blamed Americans for the Mexican bloodbath and attempted to use the Mexican murder rate as an excuse to strip us of our Constitutional rights - even while their own actions lead directly to the death of American law enforcement officers at the barrel of guns provided to criminals by... American law enforcement officials.

When the CIA provided illegal weapons to our Iranian enemies during the 1980s, the media convulsed in horror, Congressional hearings were held, and people went down on felony charges though many were later pardoned.

It would appear that the Obama administration has done almost exactly the same thing with the additional twists that a) Americans died as a direct result, and b) rather than take responsibility as did President Reagan, Mr. Obama tried to blame the American people and steal their freedoms.

The only reason Reagan wasn't impeached over Iran-Contra was because there was no proof he knew that a legitimate diplomatic operation had degraded into an illegal arms-for-hostage deal, but every underling involved lost their jobs and wound up in court.  To this day, the left sings that "Ronnie and Ollie were liars" even though they couldn't prove it.

Where are the calls to find out what Obama knew and when he knew it - to say nothing of Eric Holder, the attorney general in charge of this murderous outrage?