Weapons Traffic: New Player in Mexico’s Drug War: The NRA

A good analysis of the hypocrisy of the Obama administration - talking about reducing gun running across the border, but unwilling to confront the NRA and seek the means to realize its stated goal. 

New Player in Mexico’s Drug War: The NRA | Danger Room | Wired.com: "We may have avoided default – for now. But there’s another political monster we’ve tried to postpone that’s fed up with our recalcitrance. By this, of course, we mean Mexico’s drug war.

There’s not just an out-of-control conflict on our border. There’s also the very much related battle of gun lobbyists against the Obama administration, which is grappling with a growing gun-running scandal of its own. ...
It’s all part of a revamped White House strategy, revealed last month aimed and at combating organized crime. The plan calls for blocking financial transactions from criminal networks, strengthening legal systems in partner nations and stopping “the illicit flow from the United States of weapons and criminal proceeds that empower TOC networks.” That’s national security lingo for drug cartels, among other groups.

But there’s one problem: The administration’s top agency dedicated to stopping illegal weapons trafficking, the ATF, is embroiled in a scandal over a disastrous plan (Fast and Furious) to allow straw-purchased guns to “walk” into Mexico. Most of the weapons later disappeared out of the agency’s sight due to lack of resources (and sheer negligence), according to testimony by ATF officials last week to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. ...

All in all, the ATF watched 2,020 guns walk out of straw-purchase transactions, with only 590 guns so far recovered from crimes, 241 in Mexico. The rest have vanished, and it’s possible the numbers could be higher. ...
After all, without any physical means to track the guns, who knew where they would end up? And to make it even worse, the ATF’s agents in Mexico, the agency’s Mexican counterparts and White House national security officials were in the dark about what was happening.

So while the White House seeks to reduce gun trafficking into Mexico, its enforcement agency struggles with “limited resources” (.pdf) and even formulating a basic strategy (.pdf) regarding legal straw purchases fueling a deadly war. Thus, we get gun-walking schemes.

“The strategy says, ..., that the U.S. must stop the illicit flow of weapons to criminal gangs,”wrote Steven Dudley, co-director of InSight, a monitoring group focused on organized crime in the Americas. “However, the Obama administration has not empowered its own law enforcement agencies to do this, and does not have the political will to change the law to make this a reality.”

Dudley points out the ATF “has the same number of agents it had in the 1970s, which amounts to about 700 inspectors to keep watch over 120,000 licensed firearms sellers.”

But back in the 70s, Mexico wasn’t in the middle of a massive drug war. It is now."