A new study released by my organization, the Violence Policy Center, looks at U.S. court records from southwestern states and clearly shows that illegal gun traffickers involved in smuggling firearms to Mexico seek semiautomatic assault weapons, armor-piercing handguns and .50-caliber anti-armor sniper rifles from U.S. gun shops. Many of these guns are imported, underscoring the urgent need for the Obama administration to use its executive powers to strictly enforce existing restrictions on the import of such nonsporting weapons. Of course, this is a case of “enforcing the gun laws on the books” that the NRA would rather ignore. The NRA’s unsubstantiated claims are allowed to gain a toehold because of the information vacuum created by a federal measure backed by the organization known as the Tiahrt amendment. Up until 2003, comprehensive crime gun trace data was available under the Freedom of Information Act. This all changed with the Tiahrt amendment (named after its sponsor, Kansas Rep. Todd Tiahrt), a spending prohibition that bans the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from releasing such information. Now, we don’t even know the top crime gun in America. Bad for public safety. Good for the NRA, gunmakers and criminals. Right now a battle is being fought to repeal the measure — an action endorsed by President Obama during the campaign. — Josh Sugarmann, the Violence Policy Center, on the Huffington Post
Nobody can substantiate claims that U.S. guns cross the border “by the thousands” or “account for 95 percent of weapons used by Mexican drug gangs.” Because it isn’t true. In Senate subcommittee hearings, William Hoover, assistant director of field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said, “The investigations we have, that we see, for firearms flowing across the border don’t show us individuals taking thousands of guns a day or at a time flowing into Mexico.” Everything Mexico’s murderous thugs are doing is already illegal. At issue is not the absence of law, but the absence of political will to enforce the laws that both nations already possess. Those that make possible Mexico’s colossal corruption wear the garb of not only drug lords and gun runners, but also of too many city mayors and police chiefs, state bureaucrats and military officers. A $40 billion criminal enterprise could not exist without the complicity of these powerful co-conspirators. And these cartels are being abetted by American media and politicians who blame our freedoms for it. We should seal the border. Punish the guilty. And use existing gun and drug laws against violent drug syndicates here and in Mexico. But leave American freedoms alone. — Wayne LaPierre, National Rifle Association, on CNN.com
