Last week, Mexican President Felipe Calderon unveiled a “billboard” near the U.S. border made of crushed firearms formed into the words, "No More Weapons!"
The Mexican government (aided by American media) has consistently claimed that their country’s crime problems are due, in large part, to the flow of firearms into Mexico from the U.S.
This sentiment has been bolstered by the Obama administration through U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, his Department of Justice, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives now-infamous “Fast and Furious” gunrunning operation.
BATFE officials who supervised the operation out of Phoenix claimed as early as 2008 that 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico came from the U.S.
Of course, it has now been shown that many of Mexico’s traced firearms originate in Central America and other countries. In other words, the “90 percent” statistic was widely reported, but was obviously inflated, and BATFE officials have themselves refuted those numbers (please read related article here).
According to an Associated Press article appearing on Houston.cbslocal.com, Calderon’s billboard, which is written in English and weighs 3 tons, was placed near an international bridge in Ciudad Juarez and can be seen from the United States.
The article reports that Calderon said at the unveiling, “Dear friends of the United States, Mexico needs your help to stop this terrible violence that we’re suffering. The best way to do this is to stop the flow of automatic weapons into Mexico.”
Obama administration officials have yet to come clean on the most important details concerning their roles in the “Fast and Furious” operation, but in light of what we do know, perhaps Calderon’s billboard would have been more appropriately placed in front of the White House or DOJ.
In response to the billboard, Dennis Henigan, acting president of the Brady Campaign, predictably wasted no time in demanding more gun laws to fix Mexico’s problems. Said Henigan in a Huffington Post article this week, “The solution to gun trafficking to Mexico is also the solution to gun trafficking within the U.S.: stronger federal gun laws.”
This story also serves as a strong and timely reminder of why we need to pass S. 570, the bill to stop a gun registration scheme devised by Eric Holder and the Obama administration.
The scheme requires federally licensed firearms retailers in states bordering Mexico to report all sales of two or more semiautomatic rifles within five consecutive business days, if the rifles are larger than .22 caliber and use detachable magazines. Yet, under existing law, Holder’s BATFE has full access to every record of every firearm transaction by every licensed dealer, whether during a bona fide criminal investigation or simply to enforce compliance with record keeping requirements. This reporting scheme would create a registry of owners of many of today's most popular rifles—firearms owned by millions of Americans for self-defense, hunting and other lawful purposes.
Last March, U.S. Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.) introduced S. 570 to prohibit the use of federal money to fund the multiple sales reporting requirement.
S. 570 currently has 33 cosponsors. To see if your senators are cosponsors, please click here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:SN00570:@@@P
It is imperative that you contact your U.S. Senators and ask them to cosponsor and support S. 570. You can find contact information for your elected officials by using the "Write Your Representatives" tool at www.NRAILA.org, or you can call your U.S. senators at (202) 224-3121.
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