If you're someone named Sylvia Longmire writing for the San Diego Union-Tribune last week, there's no update. In fact, there's no such thing as Operation Gunrunner, Gunwalker, Fast and Furious or any other such unseemly thing. Like, what are you talking about?
Here is a public challenge to both the National Rifle Association and the Obama administration. I challenge you to prove that either of you has any idea what you’re talking about when it comes to southbound weapons trafficking to Mexico.(italics, ours)
The issue at hand is not whether guns sold in the United States are making their way into Mexican cartel hands; that’s indisputable. It’s trying to figure out exactly how many of those guns come from the U.S. and how many come from elsewhere.
The Obama administration has stated publicly that the United States bears much of the responsibility for the flow of firearms into Mexico and has pledged to work harder to stop it. The NRA is diametrically opposed. It has millions of members and represents gun owners’ right to bear arms, regardless of the caliber. They believe there are too many gun laws already and that the government only wants to take guns away from law-abiding citizens.
And on she goes without a single solitary reference to the deadly and illegal scheme carried out by the ATF to allow guns to be sold in the U.S. and then fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
It's jaw-dropping, really. What more needs to be said about the deplorable state of journalism in this country than someone can pen an op-ed piece in a major daily of a city that sets on the U.S.-Mexico border about the flow of guns across that border without a single mention of a gun-smuggling operation carried out by the U.S. government and which the head of that government agency will be testifying about next month?
P.S. Such was our incredulousness, we had to read the article 3 separate times to make sure we hadn't missed any word on Gunrunner/Fast and Furious. It has to be in here, right? This is the sort of stuff that makes our blood boil.
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21 comments:
Good afternoon! I just wanted to point out that with op-eds, we writers are limited to a word count. In this case, it was 750. The F&F guns are obviously a big part of this mess, but in the grand scheme of things, added roughly 1,700 firearms to a grand count of almost 30,000 firearms that were seized in Mexico during the time in question. If you include the F&F guns in those stats, it doesn't make an appreciable difference in the percentage of guns traced accurately or erroneously to US sources. I also felt that just giving it a casual mention - F&F can take up enough space for several op-eds - would take away from the overall message I was trying to get across.
- Sylvia Longmire
Quote:
According to the GAO report, some 30,000 firearms were seized from criminals by Mexican authorities in 2008. Of these 30,000 firearms, information pertaining to 7,200 of them (24 percent) was submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for tracing. Of these 7,200 guns, only about 4,000 could be traced by the ATF, and of these 4,000, some 3,480 (87 percent) were shown to have come from the United States.
An exta 1,700 does make "appreciable difference in the percentage of guns traced accurately or erroneously to US sources" when the total traced to US sources was slightly double that number, total, in two years?
Sylvia,
The fact is that our gun rights are to protect us from an abusive, over reaching, inefficient, corrupt government, PERIOD. You can disagree, but history shows that only an armed citizenry are sovereign rulers of a nation.
@Foxfier - That GAO report is not the most current information. The report submitted to Congress by three democratic senators a few weeks ago show trace data for 2009-2010. In that time, 29,000+ guns were successfully traced, and roughly 20,000 of them came back to US sources (70%). Using those most recent stats, if you add the 1,700 F&F guns, it goes from 70% to 74%. Statistically speaking, that's not considered significant.
It has a letter from the guy who will be testifying about operating this thing, and says that 20.5k were made in or shipped through the US.
Meaning the admitted number of lost and smuggled guns from AZ alone is closer to 8% of the total that the ATF had records on.
Sylvia, thanks for stopping by and commenting.
With all respect, I could not disagree more. While I can sympathize with the imposed word limit, that does not absolve you from referencing Fast and Furious.
The entire premise of your article was to get to the root cause of the flow of guns across the border. When a federal agency is running an illicit gun-smuggling operation, you are duty-bound to make mention of it in an article of this nature.
"Further complicating the matter are credible allegations from ATF agents that the Agency was allowing guns to walk back across the border from gun sales made in the U.S. The head of the ATF will be testifying before a Senate subcommittee on this matter in July".
/boom. 46 words to lay out what is an explosive set of circumstances that have cost 2 federal agents their lives and that of unknown number of Mexican agents and civilians.
It was mandatory, in an article of this nature, that Fast and Furious be made reference. Otherwise, you should've turned down the assignment.
Thanks again for stopping by and stating your case.
Foxie, thanks for the leg work on this. When 2 federal agents are dead, it kind of makes the quantities and percentages rather irrelevant, though, doesn't it?
For those whose BS detector was set off by the careful phrasing of the memo in Feinstein's Melson letter that mentioned "manufactured or shipped to the US"-- there's good reason.
According to State Department documents, in 2009 Mexico bought nearly $177 million worth of American-made weapons, exceeding sales to Iraq and Afghanistan. That number includes $20 million in semi- and fully automatic weapons.
No problem, Dean.
We all know how trustworthy Mexico's government is, don't we?
... I didn't think it was possible, but my respect for Feinstein actually dropped a bit.
"HALTING U.S. FIREARMS TRAFFICKING TO MEXICO" was submitted in June of 2011.
Operation Fast and Furious was getting official protests from Mexico's Congress in March.
Foxie,
Mexico's government?
Yeah, I was wondering where the Mexican government was in all of this. Were they compliant or did they not have a clue? And now that this thing has been blown wide open do they want their pound of flesh or is Team O leveraging some silence in return for aid, comprehensive immigration reform, etc.?
Dean/ Ms. Fier,
Good Job!
This kind of frank conversation needs to be played out in the msm, but does not. Dean is very correct:
The entire premise of your article was to get to the root cause of the flow of guns across the border. When a federal agency is running an illicit gun-smuggling operation, you are duty-bound to make mention of it in an article of this nature.
Journalism (mainstream) has abandoned the First Amendment and joined the other side. This is important to the bloggers to understand.
Is Sylvia a journalist, a sacred part of our country, or an apologist for the government?
Maybe some part knew, but their congress is pissed that they didn't....
I'd guess that whoever is in charge of submitting fire arms to the US for tracing had some sort of inkling, just from the jump in the number of guns submitted. Be VERY interesting to find out exactly what guns were submitted, when, and where they actually trace back to....
Sylvia,
I hope you understand our frustration. The administration is clearly lying about not only the nature and quantity of weapons being sold and transported to Mexico, but also about their role in the problem. The weapons sold by the Obama administration to the terrorist backed Mexican drug gangs were some of the most sophisticated and lethal weapons in our arsenal. They were force multiplier weapons, not weapons available at your local gun store.
This appears to be a strategy to expand gun control legislation by blaming innocent, gun-owning, American citizens for deaths in Mexico. The deaths are actually attributable to the lack of border security which is one of the few constitutionally legitimate duties of the government. The deaths are also related to Islamic terrorist groups who are involved in the global drug and sex trade in Mexico.
To say it concisely, this administration wants Americans to be afraid, defenseless, powerless and dependent. This is a terror tactic designed to force us into submission through fear and shame. Deaths related to this ends-justify-the-means operation were premeditated. Where is your outrage?
@Dean - This wasn't an assignment. I'm not a journalist, and I don't work for the San Diego Union-Tribune. I'm an analyst and consultant, and I write these pieces independently and pitch them to different newspapers. The premise of my article wasn't to try to get to the root cause of southbound weapons trafficking. It was to point out that (a) it's a very polarized debate between the White House and the pro-gun lobby, and (b) that both sides claim to know where most of the guns come from, but neither side has enough solid evidence to prove their case. As for "having a duty" to mention F&F in my opinion piece, remember, it's just that...an opinion piece, not a news article. I can discuss whatever I choose, and include or exclude whatever I think is relevant or irrelevant to my stance. Me not bringing up F&F doesn't change the fact that thousands of guns are being purchased in the US by strawmen working for Mexican cartels (without the ATF knowing about it), nor does it change the fact that no one knows what proportion of total guns in Mexico those amount to.
@Doo Doo Econ - I don't get outraged because that gets in the way of my objectivity as an analyst. I have my biases, like anyone else. But to do my job properly, I have to try to step back and leave as much emotion out of it as possible. I'm a former law enforcement officer and we have guns in our home, so I'm anything BUT anti-gun. Yet people think I'm a liberal simply because I say that the NRA doesn't have enough solid evidence to back up its claims. Either does the federal government.
Me not bringing up F&F doesn't change the fact that thousands of guns are being purchased in the US by strawmen working for Mexican cartels (without the ATF knowing about it), nor does it change the fact that no one knows what proportion of total guns in Mexico those amount to.
So, you've got more evidence than the White House?
The ATF presumably knows where the guns they traced came from. They COULD release that data, instead of broad and non-specific information that the weapons, at one point, were in the US. (Gee, the US makes guns?)
What we know is that, previously, a much smaller number of weapons were submitted for ATF tracing. Under the direction of the guy who thought Fast and Furious was a great idea, the number went way up.
Neither you, nor the "report" you mentioned (but didn't link or name, even though it was easy to find) found it noteworthy to point out that the main source of information was helping the cartels SMUGGLE GUNS INTO MEXICO.
That is pretty good evidence of bias and a really major lack of objectivity.
@Foxfier - Do you know where the guns NOT submitted for tracing come from? Do you know where the guns that are currently being used by the cartels that haven't been seized yet come from? Of course not, and neither do I. No one does, and that's my point. I'm not talking just about the guns that are submitted for tracing or successfully traced; I'm looking at the big picture. The guns that are seized and submitted for tracing are only a small sample of all the firearms and weapons being used all across Mexico. NO ONE has enough facts to definitively claim that most of them come from the US, or that most of them come from Central America or Asia. Where's the bias in saying that?
Do you know where the guns that are currently being used by the cartels that haven't been seized yet come from? Of course not, and neither do I.
Nice of you to admit that, since your last post claimed to know the "fact that thousands of guns are being purchased in the US by strawmen working for Mexican cartels (without the ATF knowing about it)."
Odd that you try to change the topic to all the guns in Mexico-- with their government buying over a hundred and fifty million dollars worth of weapons in just one year, that's a lot of very legal guns.
It's almost like you're trying to minimize the known smuggling.
It's interesting how you keep avoiding what people are actually pointing out, for that matter.
I think that in the haste to whack the Obama Administration for having had their own version of Iran-Contra, we're missing the bigger point that Sylvia is trying to make.
I understand she's trying to say "there are a lot of guns down there." Where it goes off the rails is where she says, basically, "so it isn't worth mentioning that we KNOW a large number were directly smuggled there under orders of one of the sides I've set up."
I think that her case was fatally flawed by the mindset that thinks 1,700 guns ordered to be sold to straw buyers is not important enough to mention, especially for what it says about the mindset of one of the sides she outlines, especially when she takes Feinstein's claims at face value.
Trying to drag the NRA into it as some sort of co-equal is ridiculous, and pointing out Ms. Longmire's willingness to ignore her own assumptions when doing the "pox on them both" routine is relevant.
KT, I whack the Obama administration whenever it warrants it just as I did the Bush admnistration.
What sort of haste is employed when there are two dead federal agents and an unknown quantity of Mexican agents and citizens that are dead also at the hands of a government-sponsored drug running operation? Should we all just cool our jets for a while until more dead bodies surface?
Sylvia, quit digging in. In just 46 words I gave you above, you could've acknowledged a "complicating" factor in the big ol' blame game between the NRA and the Obama administration you blew the lid off of.
I wonder how much of our suspicion of articles like these is derived from the repugnant, hate-filled mania the press has for Sarah Palin. I always thought anything I read in the paper was biased, but now I'm inclined to think it along the lines of Pravda. I see evil in it even when it's not there. It's unfair, but there's definitely a reason for it.
In other, almost totally ignored news, Barack Obama's pastor of 20 years is still a crazed, racist, America-hating, anti-Semite.
Oh, why bother with trivial matters like that? Did you hear how Sarah Palin said something about Paul Revere?
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