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Los Angeles Times: Renewed 'assault weapons' ban won't help Mexico's war against drug cartels
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Here is a tale of two stories: One documents the truth and the other media bias, yet both exist within one article.
Fact
The Los Angeles Times reports that Mexican drug cartels acquire military weaponry from international sources and possess trained infantry units, enabling them to successfully attack Mexican police and military.
Narcotics traffickers are acquiring firepower more appropriate to an army -- including grenade launchers and antitank rockets -- and the police are feeling outgunned.
These groups appear to be taking advantage of a robust global black market and porous borders, especially between Mexico and Guatemala. Some of the weapons are left over from the wars that the United States helped fight in Central America…
The enhanced weaponry represents a wide sampling from the international arms bazaar, with grenades and launchers produced by U.S., South Korean, Israeli, Spanish or former Soviet bloc manufacturers. Many had been sold legally to governments, including Mexico's, and then were diverted onto the black market. Some may be sold directly to the traffickers by corrupt elements of national armies, authorities and experts say.
Opposed to Eric Holder’s earlier attempt to blame American gun owners for Mexico’s problems, this news report tells the truth: Rich drug cartels successfully exploit the international arms market, which is supplied–legally and illegally–by government military markets, not by the civilian arms markets.
Fiction
Before you start celebrating Rush Limbaugh taking over the LA Times, continue reading:
Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semiautomatic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
This backhanded reference to the U.S. civilian firearms market is a set-up to promote an “assault weapons” ban. More slipstreaming the agenda:
How many weapons have been smuggled into Mexico from Central America is not known, and the military-grade munitions are still a small fraction of the larger arsenal in the hands of narcotics traffickers. Mexican officials continue to push Washington to stem the well-documented flow of conventional weapons from the United States, as Congress holds hearings on the role those smuggled guns play in arming Mexican drug cartels.
The “assault weapons” ban is back on the LA Times agenda.
But four days after the assault on the Zihuatanejo police station, four of the city's officers were slain in a highway ambush six miles from town on the road to Acapulco. In addition to the standard AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles, the attackers fired at least six .50-caliber shells into the officers' pickup. The vehicle blew up when hit by what experts believe was a grenade or explosive projectile.
Half-truths
Unlike grenades and antitank weapons, the .50-caliber guns can be obtained by ordinary citizens in the U.S. and smuggled easily into Mexico, like the tons of assault rifles and automatic pistols.
A previous ABC article implied that grenades are available to U.S. civilians. Here, the LA Times admits this is fiction. But the idea that “ordinary citizens” engage in illicit smuggling of “tons of assault rifles and automatic pistols” is right out of the anti-rights playbook.
First, let’s stop playing the anti-rights game of hardware nomenclature. Assault weapons have been all but banned since 1934. While it’s possible to buy a prohibited firearm, it is a time-consuming process involving law enforcement investigation, something criminals avoid.
Second, Attorney General Holder claims a renewed “assault weapons” ban “will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum.” But the LA Times article proves that civilian firearms fail to meet drug cartel needs, so an “assault weapons” ban will not benefit Mexico.
Third, “automatic pistols” are rarities, but they are banned just like assault rifles. This term from the anti-rights playbook is designed to strike fear into uneducated readers that some thug could pull out a hidden gun and “hose down” the area with bullets. Well, Hollywood’s in LA…
It isn’t surprising that LA Times writers are confused about what assault weapons are. Their own newspaper documents that a California county district attorney sued the state because he couldn’t understand California’s “assault weapons” law. Even the California Supreme Court ruled that the state’s law was “too vague” for gun owners to know which guns were illegal.
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