Mexican Assault Weapon

Anyone else getting tired of the lie about the "Assault Weapon Ban" would help keeping guns from going to Mexico in their little drug war?

The attorney general also suggested that re-instituting a U.S. ban on the sale of assault weapons would help reduce the bloodshed in Mexico, where last year 6,000 people were killed in drug-related violence.

Increasingly, U.S. law enforcement officials see cartel violence spill into the United States, often as far away as Phoenix and Atlanta.

As he discussed the problem, Holder spoke briefly in Spanish, pledging continued cooperation with Mexican authorities who have increasingly come under direct fire from the heavily armed drug gangs.

U.S. officials have a responsibility to make sure Mexican police "are not fighting substantial numbers of weapons, or fighting against AK-47s or other similar kinds of weapons that have been flowing to Mexico," Holder said.

DEA Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart said the raid showed the tentacles of the crime syndicate had spread far across the United States — not just to major cities like Washington and Los Angeles, but to quiet, smaller communities like Stowe, Iowa, which the cartel allegedly used as a conduit to funnel drugs around the country.

Recall that selling guns to someone from/in Mexico is already illegal. Not to mention the fact that selling of actual assault weapons to a foreign body is illegal without Federal licensing.
Recall that the "Assault Weapon Ban" from 1994 was related to semi-automatic firearms that had cosmetic similarities to actual assault weapons and had no affect on actual assault weapons that have been highly regulated since 1938.

I'm not saying the assault weapons that are going into Mexico aren't coming out of the US. But I am saying that they are NOT coming out of the civilian firearms trade. If they are coming from the US the transactions are already illegal and the 1994 like "Assault Weapon Ban" will have absolutely no effect.

As for the AK-47 they whine about, I am betting that it would be much cheaper and easier to get south of the Mexican border rather than north of the border. That is if they actually are AK-47 and not the semi-automatic versions that exist freely in the US. My question is, would a drug cartel with large amounts of money go to gun shows in the US to buy semi-auto versions when they could easily purchase fully actual assault rifles elsewhere for substantially less?

In addition, do you really believe restricting our rights in the US will stop the illegal activities that are already occurring. Making something more illegal doesn't stop it. Stemming our rights just leaves us wanting, not to mention vulnerable.

But we'll continue to sit by while the MSM protests that the "Assault Weapon Ban" is the only cure and ignore the reality of the situation.

UPDATE: SayUncle has more.

My favorite quote:

What is more, the sheer volume of licensed dealers — more than 6,600 along the border alone, many of them operating out of their houses — makes policing them a tall order. Currently the A.T.F. has about 200 agents assigned to the task.

My heart bleeds for the BATFE. Imagine what they could do by investigating this rather than prosecuting dealers for putting down a y instead of "yes" or fiddling around with what they consider the definition of a gun today. I think the worst of these bureaucrats should be shipped down to Mexico or the border states and forced to do some honest work.

In 2007, the firearms agency traced 2,400 weapons seized in Mexico back to dealers in the United States, and 1,800 of those came from dealers operating in the four states along the border, with Texas first, followed by California, Arizona and New Mexico.

Interesting data. Wonder how many were stolen? Or how many were purchased from a single dealer? Or how many were purchased from a single buyer? No data of course. You are led to the conclusion that they just leaked out of all dealers and gun owners. God knows we're all irresponsible.