The LA Times is repeating the “guns from America are fueling Mexico’s drug wars” meme. Again. I swear, this comes up every two or three months in the border states, every time some hack gets bored and decided to write a fluff piece so that his anti-gun friends will think he’s cool, I get to hear about how illegal aliens are rolling in to gun shops in New Mexico and buying automatic weapons, which is well, bullcrap. In fact, I’ve already debunked this meme once before, all the way back in 2007.
I don’t understand why it’s so persistent – Mexico is the Brady Campaign’s wet dream for gun laws, guns are effectively illegal for private citizens to own, but that doesn’t seem to stop any of the drug runners down there. The problem is course is that no one can actually explain how people are getting fully automatic Kalashnikov rifles down there “from the US”, since full auto rifles are effectively illegal here as well.
I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that a major US paper is essentially repeating the PR lines from the Brady Campaign.
I bet the criminals in Mexico are not just buying their AK-47s off the black market of South/Central America, but are also making them own their own. I am new to the AK world, but one thing I have noticed is many people do project builds on their own: of course they buy part kits for this purpose. But in places like Pakistan where children build them up from scratch by hand proves it is possible. Perhaps Mexico has a Khyber Pass like market going on?
The AK’s are probably from China, and/or (via) Hugo in Venezuela.