There are some inaccuracies in the article.
Federal officials say they have new evidence that Mexico's most violent drug cartels are exploiting U.S. guns laws to acquire massive quantities of assault rifles..... law enforcement agents Tuesday arrested 20 people who are accused of illegally buying hundreds of AK-47s......
Item one: The AK47's being sold, assuming they were legal to start with, were not actual assault weapons but simply semi-auto versions. Full-auto AK47's are not legal in the US unless you have a special license that is not easily obtained. Calling them "assault weapons" or "war weapons" as in the article is inaccurate and gives the impression that they have autofire capacity, which is in error.
Many of the weapons purchased by the groups were AK-47s, which were banned under federal law in 1994, but became legal when the ban lapsed in 2004.
This is also inaccurate. AK-47's were NOT banned under the AWB. AK47's that were already in private possession, or that were warehoused by a gun distributor, were grandfathered in and there were enough to fill the demand for them for many years to come. Only new imports of AK47's were banned, and
in reality only certain specific types of AK47's. Other AK's, like the AKM, were still legal to import and sell, and the differences were PURELY cosmetic.
Even under the AWB, they could have bought AKM's or other AK variants that are functionally identical to standard civilian-model semiauto AK47's, or standard-AK47's from a warehouse full of grandfathered imports.
In addition, officials of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said the arrests point to the urgent need for White House approval of a federal rule they proposed last month that would require firearms dealers in four southwest border states — Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, and California — to report multiple sales of long guns. ....ATF officials said such reporting would be an invaluable "intelligence tool" that would allow them identify potential straw buyers for the cartels
Well, it would be pretty rare for Joe Average GunGuy to buy more than one or two AK's at a time. I'm not crazy about this idea but I could accept it
for a limited period of time and
in the border states only, as a compromise position. The thing that concerns me, of course, is how often such "temporary measures" become permanent and spread far beyond their original intent.
None of this would be a problem, if EITHER of the following conditions existed:
1.
If we had control over our border and who or what crosses it, as any sovereign nation should.
or
2.
If Mexico had an effective government capable of keeping reasonable order within its borders.
This straw-purchase of arms is just a
symptom. The real
illness is the lack of either of those two items above.
