EventHorizon

availability isn't a factor?

In the words of a British actor pretending to be an American doctor: "numbers don't lie" -House

EDIT: to put a quote from the good doctor

__________________
Does Marcellus Wallace have the appearance of a female canine? Then for what reason did you attempt to copulate with him as if he were a female canine?

Quote:

Originally Posted by canuckguy Pretty simple really, do your own thing as long as it does not fuck with anyone's enjoyment of life.

cypher197

I'll admit I haven't read the whole thread, but I think there's something very important to consider here.

It is too late to ban guns in America. There are already waaaay too many in circulation to do so successfully. This is not the UK, which has had some measure of success with a gun ban. The US is much, much larger, and is not an island.

This is unfortunate for Mexico, where the US drug market and US gun market are driving the drug wars and arming their footsoldiers.

Willravel

The ban thing is a bit of a strawman. The vast majority of the left want gun control, not an outright ban. We're a bit concerned about the ease with which people, particularly criminals, can get guns. I'm not a fan of private gun sales, for example. I like background checks.

roachboy

actually, now that i think about it, i'm surprised that christian-types oppose state bailouts. i augustine is correct about original sin, the whole jesus thing was a bailout.
without it, the business model of being-human could lead to nothing but failure.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

KirStang

That's actually one of the biggest myths being propagated by Mexico and the media...

Mexico's Gun Supply and the 90 Percent Myth | STRATFOR



And looky here: Grenades hurled at police and security forces:

Gang gun battles, street blockades in Mexico

Grenades are tightly controlled in the US, along with other explosives. What's likely happening is that weapons are flowing in from sources other than the US. While it's true that *some* weapons are moving from the USA to Mexico, the large majority come from other sources--perhaps even from corrupt security forces and the like.

Take this for what it's worth, I've gotten in to a heated debate about this before and would rather not argue it again.

__________________

Baraka_Guru

Why are only ~1 out of 10 of those guns coming out of the U.S.? You'd think it would be higher.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Tully Mars

The chart is based on guns seized, might be an issue.

__________________
I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo

Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

Baraka_Guru

Right. Maybe it's more difficult to seize guns originating from the U.S. because the border is larger and likely more porous than others.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

The_Jazz

Or it could be what guns are favored by the gangs. If they don't want long guns and pistols and are opting for automatic weapons, those are going to be much more difficult to secure in the US.

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

roachboy

or the neat pie graphic kirstang posted could sit on studies so methodologically problematic as to be disinformation. but it's cool in paranoia.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

KirStang

Baraka, with all due respect....Mexico's bordered on the South by Guatemala, which has a murder rate twice as high as Mexico's (Source: Central America: The tormented isthmus | The Economist)

Indeed, the 3 states south of Mexico (Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua) are mired in a drug war, with over 50% of their inhabitants living in poverty.

It's incredible that, so much murder and violence are happening in the Countries south of Mexico (Panama's murder rate has also doubled in the past 3 years), yet, for all of the Isthmus's lawlessnes and drugs and violence (including many light aircraft using Guatemala as a backwater airport of sorts), it must be the AMERICAN border that's shifting guns south.

Also don't forget the porous Mexican Guatemalan Border.

Mexico's Other Border - National Geographic Magazine

__________________

Willravel

I didn't know the GAO was involved in stuff like that.

I think if I were plotting revolution, it wouldn't hinge on a governmentally protected right.

KirStang

Perhaps. But with automatic weapons and explosives tightly controlled in the USA, it just seems unlikely that automatic weapons and explosives are originating from the United States.

---------- Post added at 12:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:51 PM ----------

Yea. As cited before in this 10 page thread....Americans aren't nearly as destitute as other countries which fell to civil war. Thankfully, our institutions modulate grievances, and citizens aren't 'disappeared' for questioning the government.

__________________

roachboy

i spent a while fiddling about the the sirpi small arms transfers database

SIPRI Arms Transfers Database — www.sipri.org

but found the interface to be less that intuitive...maybe someone else who's done more work in researching international traffic in small arms for real has better insight into how to access and organize this data?

if no, i'll leave it here for now and maybe return to the question should another occasion arise in a different thread...

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Tully Mars

Yet nearly all the black market cash and the most recent focus of the Mexican government is US 100 bill. Do you also find it hard to believe they come from the US?

---------- Post added at 12:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:29 PM ----------

Also BK look at this graph again-



What exactly are the "other sources" mentioned?

I'd also contend that the total number of "seized" weapons seems awfully low. My guess is there are two reasons for this- first, a lot of seized weapons never make it to any official location. They're either sold or kept by the seizing officials. Second, so many LEO here are on the drug lords payroll I'd guess the % of gun seized as compared to the number of guns in the country is extremely low.

I'm just guessing but I base those guesses on newspaper and other news reports here in Mexico.

__________________
I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo

Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

KirStang

Yea, but unlike U.S. $100 bills, Russia, Bulgaria, S. Africa, China, Brazil and a host of other countries make guns.

__________________

roachboy

but not at anywhere near the scale the united states does.

it's implausible that the united states is not a primary source of these weapons, just as it's implausible that the love canal is the cleanest spot in the united states.

that said, at this point, i've nothing more to go on than a sense of implausibility. and frankly i've no idea how a coherent inventory would be taken.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

KirStang

I'm a little skeptical of your claim, given the 55 million of foreign made AKs flowing around in the world...

But if you're sure and can back up the small arms claim with concrete numbers and a semi-legitimate source, I'd gladly say you're right.

There's also a whole body of ITAR laws for the exportation US made small arms, too.

__________________

roachboy

well, the sirpi database is pretty definitive, but like i said i haven't the time at the moment to fight through the counter-intuitive interface to access the data.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

cypher197

To be fair, a great many guns were submitted for tracing that weren't successfully traced, and many guns weren't submitted for tracing at all.
If the tracing failed, it could be for a number of reasons, including that the guns were not of US origin.
The number could be higher in practice, but it's rather difficult to survey these things.

Of course, that's 3,500 guns that aren't particularly helping Mexico.

I am curious, though; do you have similar data about the drug markets?

Baraka_Guru

Well, I guess that was my subtle point: the data doesn't paint a full picture. It tells us something specific and rather narrow.

It isn't very useful.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Tully Mars

So you think they drug cartels smuggle in truck loads of cash from the US and use massive amounts of other resources to get guns from places like China and the Middle East? Exactly how plausible does that honestly sound? I honestly don't think I've read one story where they've intercepted a cash shipment that didn't included and stockpile of weapons including many illegal in the US weapons. At some point Occam's razor kicks in, doesn't it? The drugs go north and the cash and weapons go south. Not exactly a huge secret here south of the border.

__________________
I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo

Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

KirStang

So where do hand grenades come from?

__________________

roachboy

i haven't any hand grenade data, but i am confused about the relation between a question concerning small arms traffic and a question concerning hand grenades. how is this not like having a conversation about where hats come from and you insisting on talking about gloves?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

KirStang

Simple. Most of you insist guns and weapons are coming from the USA, since civilians can possess guns.

However, civilians cannot possess handgrenades, which seem to be used extensively by Mexican drug cartels.

So, hand grenades aren't flowing from the North to the South, but most likely through other means--i.e. the Southern Border, or, even, the two masses of water bordering Mexico. If also follows then, that if its easier to smuggle things through the south or through the oceans, then, it's probably easier to smuggle small arms and other explosives through these other routes.

If you don't mind, Id also love to see the cash smuggling articles you've read, Tully.

__________________

roachboy

and what's at stake for you in this question?
what's your commitment to one answer as over against another?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Tully Mars

Well there in Spanish and there not on-line so... I have one around here I saved for a friend let me find it and scan it in.

As for hand grenades some really could come from the us and many could come from other countries. I have read stories about drug lords having solid gold automatic rilfes made and they do come from Asia.

I don't argue all guns/weapons come for the US just a vast majority

---------- Post added at 03:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:50 PM ----------

Wait, exactly how many and how often do you think grenades are being used down here? And you do realize a lot of what gets reported as a hand grenade in the foreign press gets reported here as a home made explosive device. Sort like IEDs.

__________________
I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo

Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

KirStang

I'm just trying to cast legitimate doubt on an oft-cited statistic (90% of guns used in Crimes in Mexico are traceable) in support of stricter US gun laws. With respect to what's my stake, you know I'm a gun nut, so I'm personally invested in dispelling stereotypical claims about guns and gun owners.

Tully, I don't know if I agree with the 'vast majority' claim, but I suppose we'll agree to disagree.

I'm going to bow out now, since I probably spent 2 hours today digging up sources and writing on this topic. Good discussion, though.

---------- Post added at 05:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:59 PM ----------

According to WAPO, 72 grenade attacks in 2009-2010, apparently from the Cold War Era.

__________________

roachboy

ah--i wasn't working off that statistic. and now that you note it, i can't imagine how it'd be established one way or another. as for tracking down data, it's kind of difficult to just pull numbers pertaining to these flows out of the air that are legit---the most accurate numbers track flows from specific firms to specific endpoints and so cannot account for the---um---informal traffic. the sources for that would likely be various agencies on both sides of the border concerned with interdiction or dealing with the consequences of all these people who are strapped. and that' s spotty affair, those numbers, by necessity. i suppose there could be some clandestine statistical database but i've never heard of such a thing---just because most folk who want to participate in clandestine networks and/or activities have a kind of commitment to the whole being-clandestine thing.

so one's left with intuitions, really.

i don't have a particular iron in this fire. were i to argue for stricted gun control, it wouldn't be on these grounds anyway.

interesting to see nonetheless. it's like running into a rearguard action from another battle film.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Tully Mars

What the Wapo?

Here's an article to muddy the waters for you-

Read the whole thing

I doubt it's 90% and I doubt it's 17%. My guess is it's somewhere in between and we'll never know that number or an accurate number regarding the amount of drugs headed north.

For the record I like guns too. But I think most of the weapons being used come from the US. Rocket launch attacked and military grade weapons are no that common here, pistols and rifles are. But them again "los Zetas' the current biggest player prefers to cut heads off and hang bodies from building and bridges. Don't need a gun for that. Just a good knife and some rope.

__________________
I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo

Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

KirStang

Yea, I hate misinformation (even though both sides to the statistic may have their agenda, thus casting doubt on their veracity). Sorry to derail the thread.

__________________

Tully Mars

Here's a recent example where "Crude explosive device" ends up being reported as a grenade-

Grenade?

__________________
I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo

Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

KirStang

And now, for some humor:

__________________

Tully Mars

Only problem I see is the car is actually an HK.

__________________
I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo

Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

citadel

My head hurts.

Of course there's guns there. What there isn't is many guns legally in private hands. I'm also going to guess you're only talking about certain parts of the Middle East.

OK, I found a point I can agree with you on. The history of gun control is racist. Other than that...you're making the rest of us look bad.

Uh, that was correct. They were referring to SCOTUS appointments, and if you remember, Heller was decided with a single vote majority.

The NRA isn't even close to the most potent or even right-leaning gun rights group in the US. JPFO, GOA, SAF, and others have done much more to make changes to the gun laws that favor private gun ownership than the NRA. Charlton Heston supported the Gun Control Act of 1968.

It's playing with numbers. Suicides are what tips that scale. About half the suicides in the US are done with guns, and are often lumped in with the "gun violence" numbers. Japan has a much higher suicide rate than the US, just with means other than guns.

If you compare CDC numbers with the Brady Campaign "kids killed by guns" numbers (a gunrights group did the side by side, I forget who, it;s online somewhere) they include "children" up to age 19 (the age that captures the 1st 3 years of the males aged 16-25 involvement in violent crime in the US), and include people shot by the police, shot by citizens defending themselves, shot by other young criminals, etc. It's a numbers game, about who can lie the most with statistics.

I'm assuming you're referring to guns used inside the US? No, legal availability isn't a factor. The people obtaining them aren't legally allowed to possess or carry them in the first place due to young age, criminal record, lack of license, and so on. They aren't being obtained legally in almost 100% of the circumstances.

Ha. The cartels are recruiting Mexican soldiers who happily drive off their base with all of the guns, training and equipment provided by their military.

The laws only affect the people who obey them. Career criminals don't get jobs as software engineers because they failed a NICS check. A huge number of the crime guns in the US are stolen, but the vast majority of them aren't traced at all. Of the ones that are traced, ATF only reports the data for the ones traced successfully, meaning ones legally brought into the US, with legible numbers, where the manufacturer/FFL files were kept current and available.

Not really. You can get a semi-auto AK in the US for $400-600 retail, with a legal papertrail and attention from ATF if you buy in bulk. You can get full auto whatever you want on the international black market at wholesale cost. More gun for less money, with no one putting your driver's license number on a 4473.

The chart is based on guns seized, submitted to US law enforcement for tracing (meaning someone said "Hey, this gun looks like it came from the US"), and successfully traced by US law enforcement, who only have access to databases of info compiled in the US. This is a very narrow window.

I bet if we went to a busy shopping mall and started writing down VIN numbers of every car we saw, then contacted Ford to trace all of them, they'd only be able to trace some of them...because Ford doesn't keep track of Chevy's VIN's, just Ford's. And naturally, a large percentage of the cars successfully traced in such a manner would come back to Ford, because...Ford had those records. The same circular logic is being applied here.

Also, notice how they only specify that guns "originated" in the US. That could mean manufactured, exported, made for the military, etc. What it's being interpreted as is "guns originally bought in the US at a gun store by a private individual who turned around and gave it to the cartels as part of a scheme." That's just not the case. Most of the legally available guns popular in the US aren't popular with vicious cartel hitmen.

Huh? These numbers are on guns seized in Mexico by notoriously corrupt Mexican law enforcement. Then they ask the US to tell them where guns came from based on records maintained in the US.

The US buys tons of drugs, that's no secret. Obviously American's will pay for coke and weed with dollar bills, not Yen or Euros.

Every other source. The cottage industry of copyright infringing copies of guns made in Asia without serial numbers, guns bought or stolen internationally outside of the channels that care about paperwork and laws, all kinds of other sources. Out of fear that the Germans were bound to invade the UK, large stashes of guns were hidden all over the place with no records kept of their locations for fear of the German's finding them. No one went and rounded them up later. After WW2 ended the US sold off many of the machines they'd used to make all manner of small arms, at auction, not enough questions asked, and they all sold. We're talking about people who don't have to go to a store to buy what they want, they don't have to buy it at all, they can just take it. How many conflicts have been fought around the world in the past 30-40 years?

Exactly. They're also not telling us how the guns were recovered. A stash of AR-15's with sequential serial numbers found in a drug raid is different than pulling a pistol here and there over the past 10 years from every petty criminal and honest citizen looking to defend themselves in a country that's gone to sh**.

Yes. Probably for the same reasons that the US military doesn't send it's cooks to the local grocery store to buy food. It's not cost effective, you get better prices buying in bulk, and more importantly, you get guns that are can't be traced. You think 18 wheelers full of guns just pull up in front of Bubba's gun shop in Arizona, then cruise on down to Mexico after filling out 20,000 background check forms? Or that some cartel employee goes through local classifieds to buy a few dozen dozen mis-matched used guns at a time to slowly trickle across the border?

They have billions of dollars, and people from their own government who control things like import/export unrelated to the US border in their pocket. Why make thousands of little transactions when they can make one massive transaction from a cooperating entity on the other side of the planet? If Walmart can get cheap toasters to the US from China by sending them in bulk, don't you think others can do the exact same thing with weapons?

I don't doubt that you read it, but it's false. Gold is too malleable and soft to make a functioning gun. It would blow up in your face on the 1st shot, assuming you could cycle the action the 1st time. Gold plating is an exotic fun thing for display guns, and can be done anywhere really.

The Zetas don't run around with long scissors and twine. They mutilate the bodies of people that they've shot to death, with guns and training obtained through the Mexican military and it's US advisors. Many of those guns probably come from the US, but likely from large scale exports of arms that civilians already cannot possess legally in the US, the kinds used by soldiers. The reason most of the killings down there don't involve high grade weapons is because most incidents are on a small scale, many are planned murders, not gunfights where both evenly matched sides exchange JHP's.

The US sells old missile technology to other countries. If those exact systems start turning up in Mexican cartel's hands, are we going to start pushing for laws that make it illegal for Best Buy to sell home computers to everyday Americans? That's what this is akin to in gun terms. Sure both are computers, both plug into some power source and churn out code, but they only appear the same to people who don't know the difference. If my analogy sucks it's because I'm not a computer guy and I don't really know the difference there either.

Placing more restrictions on channels that aren't used by the people doing most of the violence, based on incomplete data that's not being published, is a piss poor idea.

Tully Mars

I'm too wore out from weeks of dealing with some family issues to address the many, many falsehoods in your responses to me. Maybe at a later time I'll go by point to address them but for now let me just say in regards of the guns made of gold they absolutely exist, but are merely status symbols and never intended to function.

__________________
I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo

Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

Willravel

Everything okay, Tully?

citadel

I hope all is well with your family, come on back when you have the time.

Tully Mars

Thanks for asking. After a very long illness (pretty much all his life, he contracted polio at age 2 in 1927) my father passed away. I'm currently in the US staying with my mother trying to help her through all this. Again thanks for your thoughts.

__________________
I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo

Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

Willravel

My condolences.