An army of lies about Mexican weapon purchases

Investor's Business Daily:

Big lies die slowly. After a claim by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that 90% of Mexican drug dealers' military weapons (machine guns, hand grenades and missiles) come from American gun stores was exposed as a lie several months ago, it's back — this time with the imprimatur of the Government Accountability Office.

A June 21 CBS "60 Minutes" report by Anderson Cooper was clearly coordinated to coincide with release of the GAO report and a similar one by "activist" Josh Sugarmann.

You are likely to soon hear and read that the GAO report commissioned by Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., confirms what Mexico's attorney general, Eduardo Medina-Mora, told Cooper: "Two thousand two hundred grenades, missile and rocket launchers!"

Cue Cooper as a video of machine guns, hand grenades and other weaponry fill the screen: "It turns out 90% of them are purchased in the U.S."

That's not all. You will hear from Sugarmann that Mexican drug dealers are buying FN Herstal Five-seven pistols from licensed U.S. gun merchants because those pistols fire bullets that penetrate protective body armor.

What you are unlikely to hear and read is that all such military weapons are illegal in the U.S., that Mexican criminals are supplied through an international black market and that this black market prominently features weapons the U.S. sold to the Mexican military and that are resold to drug cartels by corrupt Mexican officials.

Neither are you likely to hear or read that the vest-penetrating ammunition made for the FN Herstal Five-seven is available only to military and special police units.

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The persistence of this deceitful story line demonstrates the bad faith of those making the charge. The truth has been out there for some time. It was first exposed by Fox News among others. But it should be obvious to anyone who has even bothered to walk into a gun store that you cannot buy these items there.

You would think that an honest editor would at least require a reporter to go to a gun store and see if the weapons are available. But doing actual reporting might get in the way of an agenda, and besides the "facts" of these stories are "too good to check."

And, they do have a "source." But they continue to fraudulently failed to disclose that the Mexican authorities do not send back most of the confiscated weapons to be checked because they know they are not from the US.

I have blogged extensively on the Mexican criminal insurgency and its murderous brutality. But, using false and misleading data to pursue a domestic polical agenda in this country is counter productive and does nothing to stem the serious violence in Mexico.