ATF Death Watch 61: How Fast and Furious Corrupted a Nation. Ours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1lrDR8fdMs&feature=player_embedded#!

The “realization” that huge swathes of Mexico have descended into lawlessness and terror hit another milestone yesterday: “A first division football match in Mexico was abandoned because of a gun battle just outside the stadium,”the BBC reports. “Players from Santos Laguna and Monarcas Morelia ran to the dressing rooms and fans dived for cover as shots rang out in the northern city of Torreon  . . . Gunmen had opened fire on members of the security forces at a checkpoint, injuring one policeman.” Dismissing this incident as a “crime problem” misses its psychological importance to the Mexican people, and America’s role in its creation . . .

As we’ve pointed out before, neither the American nor the Mexican governments give a damn about “the war on drugs.” The illegal drug trade pours tens of billions of Yankee dollars into Mexico. Money that props-up the entire Mexican economy. Cash that sustains the entire world economy (an especially helpful influx during the recent market unpleasantness). Echarlo todo a rodar (upset the apple cart)? Por qué?

Setting aside the U.S. federal government’s collusion in the importation of Mexican drugs and workers (i.e. future Democratic voters) and the subsequent torture and/or death of tens of thousands of Mexicans (not to mention the intimidation of millions and the ATF-enabled export of guns to Mexican cartels), what do you care? That hecho en Cuautitlán Ford Focus is a great buy, even if it’s made in Los Zetas’ territory.

As for the Mexican citizens, they’re increasingly unable to ignore the gun violence that’s plaguing their people. Gunfire, murder, mass murder and torture is breaking out all over. Even Mexicans far from the carnage are gradually coming to understand that there’s no border between narco-terrorism and a peaceful, civilized society . . .

Imagine living in a world where AR-toting criminals control everything: the politicians, press, police, judiciary, taxes (i.e. non-governmental extortion) and the movement of goods and services. All the rights that you enjoy in the United States—from the freedom of speech to the right to a fair trial—are gone.

Imagine a world where these criminals compete with each other and/or the military for your obedience. Where you’re forced by gun-wielding thugs to declare your allegiance to one dictatorial crime boss or another (including the local military commander), not knowing if his enemy will kidnap, torture and kill you or a loved one “just to prove a point.”

As for any attempt to maintain even the appearance of individual rights or representational democracy, fuhgeddaboutit (Spanish translation needed). The results are predictably gruesome [via borderlandbeat.com]:

The mayor of a village in central Mexico has been found dead a day after he was kidnapped, security officials say, bringing to five the number of mayors killed in the country this year.

“In the morning, we found a corpse in the town of El Pochote, and we confirmed in the afternoon that it was (Zacualpan Mayor) Jesus Eduviges Nava Altamirano ,” a security official from southern Guerrero state said on Saturday.

A report from the state security bureau indicated that Nava “was found naked, with signs of torture all over his body and blunt force trauma to his forehead, which apparently caused his death.”

Mayor Altamirano wasn’t shot. But the men who killed him were armed with American-made weapons and ammo. Probably. We’d have a better idea of who’s carrying what if the Mexican government released the data on the provenance of ALL the weapons they confiscate at crime scenes. Which they used to do. But don’t anymore.

Not so co-incidentally, the Mexicans stopped revealing full gun trace data about the same time the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (and Really Big Fires) was making its case to Congress for more funding for its border-based initiatives and (what the Heck) a new long gun registration scheme for Americans buying guns at 8500 stateside gun dealers.

It also turns out that the full crime gun info—not the ATF’s cherry-picked data that [falsely] suggested that 90 percent of the cartels’ weapons came from Bob’s Gun store—disappeared about the same time Project Gunrunner morphed into Operation Fast and Furious.

It’s impossible for Americans to understand our role in Mexico’s gun violence without this information. Sure, the Gunwalker scandal formed in these shadows [inadvertently] helped hobble the ATF’s jack-booted anti-Second Amendment thugs. But it’s done sweet FA to illuminate us on the reality of the so-called “Iron River” of guns supplying the Mexican drug cartels.

Oh sure; we now know that some two thousand ATF-enabled guns (including .50 caliber rifles) made it to members of the U.S. and Mexican-friendly Sinaloa cartel. But there are hundreds of thousands of fully automatic rifles in country. How many of those are U.S. guns and how did they get there? Seepage from U.S. military and law-enforcement sales perhaps?

In that sense, Operation Fast and Furious helped throw a veil over the ideological corruption within our own government. It perpetuated the disconnect between our stated policy goals (democracy, freedom, that sort of thing) and their implementation (arming cartels and facilitating drug shipments, allowing human rights die at the point of a gun).

I digress. While revealing the Uncle Sam’s culpability in arming Mexican drug cartels would do wonders for encouraging debate over the United States’ South American foreign policy (a can of worms the size of Belize), while it might help us choke off the supply of U.S.-made weapons to Mexican drug cartels (Bushmaster’s profits be damned), it’s too late.

The Mexican cartels have all the right rifles in all the right calibers; all the handguns, grenades, grenade launchers, explosives and ammunition they need to wage a war. I mean, continue to wage a war. Against each other. Against the Mexican military (where applicable). Against the Mexican people.

No question: the U.S. federal government should legalize “recreational” drugs and seal the border to choke off the cartels’ supply of money. Screw FoMoCo. But that ain’t gonna happen. So there’s only one hope for Mexican democracy: arm the people.

Mexico’s citizenry are the narco-terrorists’ hidden victims. They are also the only participants in this sick, sad saga who really care about human rights. Theirs. Their God-given right (yes that again) to defend their lives, their families and their property from criminals.

You can be as cynical about endemic Mexican corruption as you like, but the rule of law ultimately depends on personal self-defense. borderlandbeat.com:

Tha last post on Veracruz mentioned last Sunday’s grenade attack against the public outside of the city aquarium. A family from Texcoco, EdoMex, suffered the full force of the explosion and shrapnel.

The grenade was tossed from a vehicle that was being pursued by military authorities through the Villa del Mar area of Veracruz. The men in the vehicle were suspected of participating in the shootout in Boca del Rio earlier that afternoon.

It has come to light that in a heroic act to shield his loved ones, the father of the Sanchez Bonilla family threw himself on the grenade. He died while his wife and children were wounded.

The children Christopher and Joselyn Sanchez Bonilla, 5 and 6 years old, have been stabilized in an intensive care unit in Veracruz.

Christopher suffered wounds to his jaws and Joselyn suffered head and neck trauma.

Restore the Mexican people’s right to keep and bear arms and let’s see what happens. Maybe the violence involving guns and grenades (strangely unavailable at Bob’s Gun Store) would increase. Maybe the Mexican army would be unable to tell the good guys from [their] bad guys. Who knows?

But America—I’m looking at you NRA—needs to stand up for the only policy that has a glimmer of staunching the river of blood flowing down Mexican streets, returning the country to something approximating civil order. The more you look at Mexico, the more you understand that the rule of law depends on the individual right to keep and bear arms.

It’s time for American gun rights activists to take-up the cause of Mexican freedom and democracy. Would that include a boycott on Mexican-made goods (starting with dope and coke)? You tell me. As gun control advocates would say, something must be done. And it seems like we’re the only ones who are interested in doing it. Well, I am. You?