Finally we're giving back to Mexico

U.S. Is Arms Bazaar for Mexican Cartels

The Mexican agents who moved in on a safe house full of drug dealers last May were not prepared for the fire power that greeted them.

When the shooting was over, eight agents were dead. Among the guns the police recovered was an assault rifle traced back across the border to a dingy gun store here called X-Caliber Guns.

Now, the owner, George Iknadosian, will go on trial on charges he sold hundreds of weapons, mostly AK-47 rifles, to smugglers, knowing they would send them to a drug cartel in the western state of Sinaloa. The guns helped fuel the gang warfare in which more than 6,000 Mexicans died last year.

Mexican authorities have long complained that American gun dealers are arming the cartels. This case is the most prominent prosecution of an American gun dealer since the United States promised Mexico two years ago it would clamp down on the smuggling of weapons across the border. It also offers a rare glimpse of how weapons delivered to American gun dealers are being moved into Mexico and wielded in horrific crimes.

Mexico: we don't want your damned people walking over here and doing our menial labor in the fields and restaurants of America.....but if you want sneak over here just for the purpose of buying guns from us and slaughtering each other and innocents in a fevered drug war? Be our guests, pesos spend as good as any currency. Cash overrides fear of Aztlan any day.

Unsurprisingly the cartels do this because not only are our gun laws waaaaay looser than Mexico's (thank you Chuck Heston) we also don't care if you're clearly not a citizen when you buy enough guns to arm a militia. We only care that you're not a citizen if you are trying to cook food, pick food, work construction, or clean someone's house. What will we do about it? Probably nothing, because then we'd be infringing on the 2nd Amendment, which in addition to covering terrorist suspects probably also covers Mexican drug cartels.

If you're interested in just what exactly our weapons are fueling this time, I urge you to click over to the LA Times series on Mexico's drug war, a near daily account of violent murders, shootouts, and street wars.