Weapons Traffic: Treaty to curb gun smuggling to Mexico remains stalled

Another demonstration of just how much control the NRA has, including over the fate of Mexico.

Treaty to curb gun smuggling to Mexico remains stalled: "...the symbolically important treaty (the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Amunition, Explosives) has gone nowhere, offering a lesson in the political sensitivities of taking even modest legal steps to crack down on gun-smuggling to Mexico. While the Obama administration has taken other actions, such as sending anti-trafficking teams to the border, neither the White House nor Congress has pushed the treaty, which the gun lobby opposes. 


CIFTA requires countries to criminalize the illegal manufacture and import or export of weapons. In addition, nations have to ensure that guns are marked with manufacturers' names when they're produced or imported, as U.S. law has required since 1968. The convention also calls on countries to share information on things such as trafficking routes. 


Under CIFTA, "you can't sell a weapon to a country where it's not legal. How controversial is that?" said Jonathan Winer, who was the U.S. chief negotiator in 1997. President Clinton signed the treaty in 1997, and sent it to the Senate the following year (where it sits, unratified, twelve years later)." Oct. 22, 2010, Washington Post