Mexico to have access to U.S. gov. database of seized weapons

[ericire12]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6239531.html

WASHINGTON — The country’s new homeland security chief said Friday that the Obama administration is mapping out a crackdown on the flow of firearms smuggled to Mexico’s murderous drug gangs operating along the Texas border.

Janet Napolitano said she had directed the Customs and Border Protection service “to find guns going south and interdict them.” Additionally, the homeland security secretary said she will give Mexican authorities access to a government database to trace the U.S. origin of seized weapons.

U.S. and Mexican officials have been investigating organizations in Houston and elsewhere believed to have smuggled large numbers of weapons into Mexico. On Friday, a second man pleaded guilty in Federal Court in Houston to illegally purchasing military-style weapons that ended up with Mexican drug cartels.

“A growing wave of criminal violence in Mexico’s border communities and in the interior of the country, fueled by the availability of guns and currency smuggled south from the U.S., poses a serious threat to Mexico’s security,” Napolitano said, “and portends deepening problems for our nation’s border regions.”

Assault rifles

Napolitano, a former federal prosecutor, battled gun runners while serving as governor of Arizona. She said she had stepped up discussions with officials of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Mexican law enforcement to combat U.S.-based gun smuggling, which enables Mexican drug lords to outfit their paramilitary gunmen with assault-style weapons.

Guns bought in the U.S. that end up in Mexico have become an irritant in bilateral relations.

President Barack Obama promised Mexican President Felipe Calderon at a pre-inauguration summit in Washington on Jan. 13 to take stronger action against gun running.

Calderon is waging a relentless offensive against Mexican drug gangs that are threatening his nation, deploying some 30,000 security forces into northern Mexico More than 5,400 civilians, drug operatives and security forces were killed in Mexico last year. About 90 percent of the 28,000 weapons seized from drug gangs over the last two years originated in the United States.

Napolitano said she was working to give law enforcement agencies in northern Mexico immediate access to the ATF database known as E-Trace. The ATF, a branch of the Justice Department, already has installed E-Trace technology at nine U.S. consulates in Mexico to provide points of access.

Napolitano said expanding access to the database would allow U.S. authorities to analyze patterns of weapons flow and bring prosecutions.

She said that she had not “thought about” the possibility of asking Congress to restore a decade-long federal ban on assault-style weapons that expired in 2004 under the Bush administration.

ATF official William McMahon told the Houston Chronicle in December that his agency had not assessed whether expiration of the assault weapons ban in the United States in 2004 had played a part in the flow of U.S.-bought weapons into the hands of drug cartels.

ATF says it has boosted efforts to alert more than 3,700 federally licensed firearms dealers near the border to spot the U.S. citizens serving as straw weapons buyers who can make up to $100 a weapon for purchasing firearms for drug cartels.

stewart.powell@chron.com

[TAB]

we honestly need to tell mexico to f..k off.


On every thing.

[MikeBjerum]

We are, or used to be, a soverign Nation, and it is time we act like it!  They can send us lists of firearms they want checked and a credit card to cover the expenses involved, and when we have time we will let them know if they are legal or not.  However, it is none of their damn business who sold it or who bought it!  These are busniesses, citizens and legal residents of this Nation, and once again it is none of their damn business.

[shooter32]

We are, or used to be, a soverign Nation, and it is time we act like it!  They can send us lists of firearms they want checked and a credit card to cover the expenses involved, and when we have time we will let them know if they are legal or not.  However, it is none of their damn business who sold it or who bought it!  These are busniesses, citizens and legal residents of this Nation, and once again it is none of their damn business.

  +10 on "SOVERIGN NATION" this is long over due!!

[cookie62]

Now the honest Mex. goverment employees can just search who bought weapons, where they live, and send there buddies across the border to steal them.

[Sponsor]

[1776 Rebel]

I bet you that this is related to the 100 MILLION DOLLARS OF Stimulus bill money I mentioned in a previous thread. It is for this BATFE eTrace stuff and project Gunrunner..

http://www.downrange.tv/forum/index.php?topic=4930.0

[Thanos]

Well, I think this is a great idea! After all, those gun have to be comming from the US, the couldn't possibly come from anywhere else. Like Columbia, Venezuela or Brazil. Because guns don't travel north, people travel north.

On a side note did anyone see that Hugo Chavez has received permission from Russia to make AK-47s? I feel safe now.