That argument that the laws we have now are sufficient if they were only enforced properly keeps popping up. In your opinion, Airman Doors, which law that currently exists isn’t being enforced enough? Why do you think that is?
If weapons are allegedly being smuggled across the border it would be a simple thing indeed to a) match the serial numbers to the dealers who received them, b) match the serial numbers to the purchasers who passed the NICS check, and c) if the weapons were stolen, interrogate the owners and employees of the businesses in question to determine when they were stolen and how many. There is no way that all of these weapons were stolen one by one from individual owners, such a rash of thefts would have been reported on long ago. The same goes for mass thefts from gun dealers. So someone is facilitating this. Those people should go to jail. It takes nothing more than a check of a computer, a records pull of the manufacturer, and an examination of the dealer’s bound book. As far as the second point goes, the dealers in question are obligated to keep the Form 4473 for a specified period of time before they are obligated to destroy them, which makes it a short-term registry of sorts. So my question is this: where is the BATFE in all of this if it is such a problem?
Another thing: border controls work both ways. If this is such an epidemic, where are the Mexican authorities? Shouldn’t they be patrolling the border as well in order to keep these weapons out of the hands of their citizens?
Based upon all of that, I think that the alleged weapons smuggling from the United States is relatively low volume and Mexico is simply using that to score political points. I suspect the weapons are actually coming from the south rather than the north. The alternative is for me to believe that the BATFE (and the FBI, who surely would be called in on crimes of such large magnitude) is utterly incompetent. I can’t say I find that to be impossible, but the level of incompetence it would take to miss this would be staggering.
The ultimate proof of this to my mind would be the issue of the grenades. Every grenade, every single one of them, requires BATFE approval and registration and a Department of the Treasury tax stamp. Each of them costs several thousand dollars.
Who are these owners that are willing to smuggle them across the border when the BATFE can (and does) show up at their door and demand proof that they still possess said weapons along with the credentials to make it legal. Are they all stolen? If you think so you sorely overestimate the number of people who own grenades. And even if that number is large it still requires a thief to pick the right houses, something that is problematic at best. Again, such a rash of thefts would be immediately obvious.
Someone is supplying large numbers of weapons. It’s not private owners in the United States. Common sense would dictate that. I suggest that Mexico look south, or maybe within rather than without to solve the real problem. And while they’re doing that, we nail our criminals to the wall.
Damn. Another argument. So much for staying out of this nonsensical thread.
What makes you think the two thirds they did not provide to the ATF for tracing are less likely to be American-sourced? 
This is like claiming that a poll is meaningless because they only polled 30,000 people instead of the entire US population.
Maybe the old rusty ones are the just the ones they chose to hand in. I have an unscrupulous relative who took some guns that had been damaged in a house fire to one of those “gun buyback” events. He said he wasn’t sure there was a single functioning firearm in the whole place.
It does take a fair bit to convert them to RELIABLE full automatic, though–the “just drill out a few bits here” conversions that are possible without replacing the receiver are notoriously prone to misfires and jams that render the gun permanently damaged.
I’m with Airman here–if we have US-origin serial numbers, crucify the idiots responsible with the full power of extant US law. I don’t think this is actually the root cause of Mexico’s problem, though.
Is anybody else getting progressively more annoyed with the stray apostrophe in the thread title? Every time I see an update to this thread, I want to scream, “The cartels’ WHAT?!”
If those 30,000 people aren’t randomly selected it is meaningless when represented as a poll of the US. Like if 30,000 gun-owners were asked if there should be more gun regulations and the pollster then said 95% of US was against more regulations.
Mexico didn’t submit automatic weapons made elsewhere or weapons not available in the US. Those that were submitted also included automatic M-16s and grenades (“Not available in stores!”) that were sold to Mexico by the US government and diverted or stolen from the Mexican army.
The exact numbers can’t be determined, but 90% is a flat-out lie.
No, but I don’t think they are stupid, either. Why buy more expensive and less capable guns when you don’t have to? Also, not every gun slinging hombre in Mexico is a rich drug lord…many of them are just poor slobs trying to get a cut and willing to do whatever they have to to get it. THEY aren’t going to buy more expensive and less capable guns if they don’t have to, since for them money is certainly an object…if it weren’t, they wouldn’t be Mexican gun bunnies trying to get a cut, no?
No, it doesn’t take that much to convert them, though the conversion is often less than optimal (they tend to jam and stick more, and the actions tend to have other issues with the conversion). The point though is why go through the hassle of conversion when you don’t have to? You can buy fully automatic weapons south of the border (or from other countries, like, say, in Africa) by the boat load. As to thousands of ‘cheap AK’s’ in the US, that’s true, but ‘cheap’ is a relative term. They are ‘cheap’ to us, no doubt…maybe a couple hundred a piece. A bargain, even if they aren’t fully automatic. But you can get a decent used AK in some places for $50 (US of course)…and it IS fully automatic. Again, why buy a more expensive and less capable gun (that you will then turn around and spend more on to convert, which will leave you with an even more expensive and less capable weapon)??
-XT
Spite.
Yes, because anyone who wouldn’t be ok with defining this, this, and this as machine guns is just hiding behind jargon and being pedantic. Oh wait, those don’t look scary, they must not be machine guns, even though they have identical functionality to the ones you are calling machine guns. My bad.
You are ignorant. You deliberately attempt to spread ignorance, and then hide behind the idea that the people telling you the truth are just picking the tiniest of nits. They are not.
This is wrong. For two decades any AK type rifle manufactured or imported in the US requires that the receiver be modified in a way that makes it unsuitable for conversion to fully automatic. In the case of AKs, they drill into the receiver where the auto sear would go, so that it physically can’t be attached to the rifle.
Well, for one, there are probably lots of straw purchases going around, if any of this is even true. They’re buying weapons to smuggle back home, not for their personal use. Obviously they’re in violation of smuggling laws. It’s hard to examine exactly what laws are being broken without knowing what path they took to smuggle these weapons. Why would restricting what US citizens can do a reasonable response here? If there’s a large scale under the table arms movement going on here, then address that - otherwise let the Mexicans secure their borders.
Anyway, this whole thing strikes me as bullshit. After 9/11, the Brady Campaign and VPC tried to claim that Al Qaeda came to the US and through the “gun show loophole” bought AK-47s which they then smuggled back to Afghanistan. I am not making this up. They actually thought this was a clever way to attack the non-existant “gun show loophole”, by implying that in a country awash in actual fully functional military AK-47s that you can probably buy for $5, they’d come to the US, go through background checks, buy $300+ weapons which were not fully functional military weapons, and then smuggle them back to Afghanistan.
Similarly, I doubt the cartels get many weapons from the US. It’s mexico, it’s corrupt, they have bad border controls, and they have many sources of cheaper, actual AK-47s if they want them. The Mexican police probably just collected a few weapons that actually did originate in the US and then try to give the impression that it was a real problem and that a significant amount came through that way so that they could get some of the political heat off their backs and throw the blame around.
You guys embarass yourselves with threads like these.
Why provide only a third of the data when most or all of the data has already been collected? Certainly there are legimate reasons for the smaller sample, but the most likely is cherry picking the data.
When you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not zebras. Especially in Mexico.
Mexican President Flavian Amphitheatre totally rides a zebra.
And I was afraid I wouldn’t get any decent pictures to wank off over. Was it good for you too?
To be clear, those are machine guns to you, right?
To be clear … I didn’t really look because I couldn’t give a shit.
Proudly ignorant. You do the board a great service.
You did look, knew you were wrong, knew you couldn’t defend your bullshit assertions, and this is a copout. However, you are quite willingly wrong, and you will trot out the same bullshit argument again.
A - I don’t click pic links at at work, even if it’s fluffy kitties or cuddly machine guns.
B - A mere mention of the term “machine gun”, anywhere on this board, is constantly met with some fan-wank screed on what is and isn’t semi- / auto- / assault- / etc. -. I swear, I could pick any thread on this board at random and posting nothing more than the words “machine gun” and get the same fucking response.
So, here, let me make it simple for you: I’ve read them all before and I know the points you are trying to make … I just don’t give a shit for the reasons expressed above … and in my first posting in this thread.
You’re saying that it would be politically EASY to ban most hunting rifles if it weren’t for NRA opposition? Seriously? Sounds to me like you’ve been smoking what the Mexican cartels are selling.
I agree with xtisme - if the cartels want real AK-47s, with real fully automatic fire capability, they wouldn’t have to look very far to find them. But they won’t find them in the US. In the US, they’ll just find crippled semi-auto fire AK-47-lookalikes. If they actually want semi-auto .223’s, they don’t need to buy AK-47-lookalikes, they could just buy Remingtons with friendly-looking wood stocks. If what you’re interested in is the ability to shoot people with them, there’s no functional difference.
And I say this as a non-American, non-gun-owing, non-NRA member.
Yes, when you lie about what a machine gun is, people step in to correct you. What’s wrong with that? If you called a cessna 152 a jet fighter and then talk about how dangerous general aviation is and needs to be banned, people would probably step in and correct that to. And your answer would be OH YEAH I’VE HEARD ALL OF YOUR NITPICKING I DON’T CARE, JUST GONNA GO WITH IGNORANCE HERE THANKS. If you continued on thread after thread about how cessna 152s are jet fighters, you would be a liar. And that’s what you are here.
Well, that’s understandable. I’ve clicked on a few links before and, well, they weren’t of fluffy kitties, though close…
The trouble is that it’s not ‘fan-wank’, it’s reality, but that you don’t seemingly want to educate yourself on it and you simply want to call it ‘fan-wank’ as if that is a legitimate dismissal. I can understand not being interested in the subject, but the thing is, no one is putting a gun to your head and MAKING you participate in the threads where this subject comes up, so it’s militant ignorance you are demonstrating here.
-XT