“It started with 27 rail cars full of ammunition rolling down the tracks into Mexico,” washingtpost.com reports. “That load of 30 million bullets was soon followed by fleets of Black Hawk helicopters and thousands of Humvees: in all more than $1 billion of American military equipment sold to Mexico within the past two years.” The Post reports that the “unprecedented sales” represent a “100-fold increase from prior years.” What’s not said . . .

Is how many firearms – guns – the United States has shipped to the Mexican military and police in that time, or before. Or how many of those guns have “seeped” to the cartels, especially from the more than 100k troops who’ve defected from the military to the cartels. But at least we learn what triggered the suspiciously unspecified arms sales bonanza:

In late 2013, Mexico asked the United States if it could fill a large order of 5.56 mm ammunition, and the embassy helped deliver the trainloads of $6 million worth of bullets within 100 days, the official said.

“That case really kind of broke the ice,” he said. “They saw the responsiveness of what we could do as a partner in foreign military sales. And they liked it.”

That sale paved the way for even larger purchases: orders for more than two dozen UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters for the Air Force and Navy, and more than 2,200 Humvees. Since Peña Nieto came to office in late 2012, Mexico has purchased about $1.5 billion in equipment through the government’s military sales program, plus $2 billion more through U.S. companies, said Inigo Guevara Moyano, a Mexican defense consultant based in Washington.

Not to go all Alex Jones on you, but that enormous ammo shipment coincides exactly with the ammo drought that followed the Newtown massacre. To be fair, the Post raises the question of whether or not up-armoring and ammo selling process is a good thing given the Mexican military’s history of rape, torture, extortion and murder of Mexican civilians.

Some have been critical of the U.S. sales, particularly in a climate where Mexican security forces have regularly been accused of human rights violations. Last year, 43 teachers college students disappeared in Guerrero, allegedly captured and killed by local police working with drug gangs.

A few months earlier, 22 civilians were killed by the Mexican military in the town of Tlatlaya south of Mexico City. The army first described the incident as a firefight but later admitted that a number of the civilians had been executed after surrendering. Relatives of the 42 men killed last month on a Michoacan ranch have accused the authorities of torturing and executing them, claims the government denies.

Researcher John Lindsay-Poland wrote for the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) that the “massive militarization” is “bad news for the many Mexicans devastated by the abuses of police and soldiers.”

“The United States must develop other capacities besides producing guns and military equipment for finding a healthy balance of trade and addressing our own problems,” he wrote.

But others see this as necessary maintenance and modernization for an under-equipped military.

“It’s mainly a process of correcting the imbalance,” Hope said. “Having Humvees will not affect how much respect they have for human rights.”

But sending fully-automatic rifles to Mexico – knowing that they’ll be used to impose tyranny and/or end-up in cartel hands – while attempting to limit Americans’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms, reduces respect for the administration’s gun control efforts. Does it not?

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64 COMMENTS

    • Great minds think alike.
      I was all set to comment, and then saw that MMM already did it in the very first comment, almost word for word.

    • The Alamo was in mexico at the time. I’ll bet a lot of people from Mexico remember it as well. Nothing bad can come of arming these folks, right?

      • “. . . arming these folks . . . ” To whom does the word “these” refer?

        I can identify 3 possibilities:
        – Mexican government
        – cartels
        – peaceful citizens

        Apparently, we are arming the first 2 but working diligently to stop arming the 3’rd. Does this make any sense?

        In our own country we recognize the “right of the people” to KBA; but, outside our own country, we only arm governments and criminals. Go figure.

        • In our own country we recognize the “right of the people” to KBA; We do? I thought the 2A only applied to the National Guard.

        • Remember what happened in Argentina. The .gov was violent and corrupt. Needing to distract their people from the .gov’s criminal behaviour they stirred the folks up with a desire to reclaim the falklands.

          Now Mexico’s .gov is just plain awful. Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California and more used to be Mexico. And they have a large population of American citizens and non American citizens that identify as Mexican.

          Too far fetched to consider? We’ve reduced our military, always taken as a sign of weakness by our enemies in the past.

  4. This is part of the bill paid by US taxpayers to enforce the US government’s global tyrannical drug war.

    • This is part of the bill paid by US taxpayers to enforce the US government’s global tyrannical drug trade.
      –There, I fixed it for you.

  5. “Reduces respect for this Administration’s….” ??? Say what? Surely you jest… the words “respect” and “this Administration” does not compute nor comport.

  6. OK where are they getting the money to pay for this? Also how many cartel and groups like isis getting them after we deliver? Also are these not the same people screaming that US citizens are selling weapons to mexico to begin with?

    • You can bet it was heavily subsidized by us (U.S.) tax payers.

      If/When the Mexican military start slaughtering civilians or otherwise running amok, then Obama and the Democrats can claim millions of Mexicans need to be granted sanctuary in the U.S and the floodgates will be wide open.

      The only up side is Americans now have a handy reserve of M16s, should corrupt politicians force through some kind of “Assault Weapon” (scary looking gun) ban. Given how porous the southern border is, those unregistered/illegal “Assault Rifles” (fully-automatic) will be flooding back home.

      • “If/When the Mexican military start slaughtering civilians or otherwise running amok, then Obama and the Democrats can claim millions of Mexicans need to be granted sanctuary in the U.S and the floodgates will be wide open.”

        Now that sounds like the real motivation: increase the scope of the violent chaos in Mexico so that even more Mexicans flood north to reinforce Democratic voting ranks in the United States even further.

  7. The way I see it we’re sending top quality military gear to a .gov that’s very violent and corrupt. We share a common border with this failed state and we’re reducing our military to near irrellevence.

    Who doesn’t see a potential future problem with this?

      • Oh my dear Lord, I was dying when i read that. “Who didn’t see that coming?” “Stevie Wonder”

        I have to figure out an excuse to use that in another forum some where.

        Most excellent “I see what you did there” award of the entire week.

        • There’s a reason Ralph is so popular around here. Comment for comment he scores more than any of us. Funny fellow that’s difficult not to like.

    • They can guard their side of the border with humvees and apaches and m4’s, we can guard our side with 870’s with beanbags and camped out rednecks.

      Makes sense, gotta give the cartels secure escorts.

  8. But sending fully-automatic rifles to Mexico – knowing that they’ll be used to impose tyranny and/or end-up in cartel hands – while attempting to limit Americans’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms, reduces respect for the administration’s gun control efforts.

    … Indeed, it must not be about the guns, it must be about control…

  9. “Not to go all Alex Jones on you”? All Alex does is what you just did. Connects the dots and backs them up with documented facts. Just because he and others like him don’t blindly believe governments official stories doesn’t make them “nuts”. Because officials would never lie to us right? My God man they have blatantly lied to us about why we are fighting in the middle east. If they do that to our face what do you think they do in secret? Let’s just keep on believing the cartoon physics heh.

    • And yeah I know this will likely end me up on a list. What becomes of a conspiracy theory once the slimmest of evidence is produced? No longer theory, right?

  10. Not to go all Alex Jones…but anyone who has worked for the government and seen the corruption here in the US of A knows that something smells fishy. This whole Mexico thing has been going on for awhile. As they said in Watergate…follow the money. Lets say that it would not surprise me one bit to hear that the cartels are our invention. That billions of dollars are funneled to government officials on this side of the border. That all sorts of deals are made betwixt us and Mexico. We get drugs. We get the refuse of Central America and they get power, arms, wealth etc. The idea that our government folks are virgins in white is laughable.

  12. What a brain trust of foreign policy geniuses we have here.

    This is Foreign Neighbor Stabilization 101 — we do NOT want a destabilized Mexico. Yes, some aid will get into cartel hands. But not most. The Mx federal govt is the least corrupted segment of the nation, and the mx military too. The closer you get to DF, the less power that cartels have.

    • The Mx federal govt is the least corrupted segment of the nation, and the mx military too.

      You just damned them with the faintest of praise.

    • The problem, of course, is that these weapons aren’t going to be used to defend Mexico or its people from the cartels, but instead will be used for repression. Pena Nieto has long stopped seriously fighting the cartels and the drugs are coming into this country just as before the drug war began. You can look forward to political killings in Mexico. I don’t know why our government should be helping kill democracy in a country that’s our neighbor.

    • Yes, we don’t want an unstable Mexico. That could result in a flood of refuges, violence and criminal activity spilling over our border. Oh, wait….

    • Hardly a brain trust. More like the biggest group of clueless dumbasses that I have seen in a long time when it comes to Mexican policy and things Spanish.

      Mexico has had an excellent military for decades for a nation of its size. After all, not every country spends more than the next 6 countries combined.

      Considering the struggles they are going through right now defense spending in Mexico isn’t up that much. They are just buying more and more product from the USA. In the past they bought rifles from Germany and helicopters from the Russians, among other places. Everyone else is going to versions of the M4, why not Mexico? http://militarybudget.org/mexico/

      As far as corruption goes, some of you ammosexuals that are scared to death of your own government really should take a hard look at what goes on in some of the southern states with red politicians that are stealing their own citizens blind. Texas and Florida right now make Mexican politics look pretty transparent.

      Anyway, the number of Other Than Mexicans coming into the USA has reached the point where Mexican are fewer than Others. And Mexico is now catching most of the South and Central Americans before they get to the US border, which is what the Mexican haters wanted all along. Right?

  13. Just part of the bill paid by the US taxpayer to prop up the US government’s tyrannical global drug war.

  14. “Sold” requires cash transfer from the recipient to the transferor. Somehow I doubt any such activity occurred here.

  15. “That case really kind of broke the ice,” he said. “They saw the responsiveness of what we could do as a partner in foreign military sales. And they liked it.”
    We need to form a CO-OP with the NRA. We could call it Transexual Transylvania and pretend we are a foreign country and petition the State Department for all sorts of ammo and gun sales to our foreign CO-OP. At least we could get some ammo.

  16. “Not to go all Alex jones”
    Funny. That guy has a sensationalist style, but after years of skepticism, I have to admit that he, and more importantly his guests, are right, honest, and uncensored, far more often than other more mainstream outlets. So in my opinion, feel free to go all Alex jones with your facts. History, politics, and society in general are not the one dimensional things they are presented to us as. thinking one dimensionally and ignoring the second and third order effects is one of the reason we have so many issues in this country.

    Mexico needs to be stabilized. That’s why we ship them money, technology, and weapons, while taking on their unwanted dregs to fill jobs that our overly entitled youth should be doing in this country.

    • If we want Mexico stabilized, all we need to do is make further sales of anything important contingent on them adopting a plainer version of our Second Amendment, some thing like:

      A well-armed populace being the best guarantee of liberty, the natural right to keep and bear arms shall not be restricted, burdened, regulated, or otherwise infringed.

      Then have a treaty allowing the citizens of both countries to take their personal arms with them when they cross the border.

    • Watched the video and could not understand the Spanish but think he said something about Poncho Villa and Miller Light. Wonder what that was about ? 😉

  17. Anyone know if Mexico started ordering a metric fuckton of 22lr as well? That might explain some things…

  19. Unlikely as the ammo they purchased was mil-spec, same ammo the military buys. Would not affect most manufacturers as mil-spec lines of production aren’t even co-located with other lines of ammo even if same manufacturer was making both, but they don’t. A subsidiary might, but not same organization.

  20. Not buying the Newton ammo shortage connection. 30 million rounds of 5.56mm is a drop in the bucket and doesn’t account for the shortage of .22LR and other calibres, all of which are made on completely separate equipment than 5.56mm.

  21. I’m not looking forward to when that military equipment comes back, marching to take back Texas and maybe gain some old French lands.

  22. Legalize and regulate drugs via strict prescription type system for hard drugs (people who already addicted). The reason heroin and cocaine are in the top 10 most expensive substances by weight is because of their legality. An illegal oxycodone pill that sells for $10-$30 “on the street” costs $1 without insurance from a pharmacy. CLEARLY prohibition doesn’t work.

  23. So the ammo shortage coincided with the shipments to the Mexican military?

    Huh. I didn’t know the military used .22 down there.

  25. A well regulated militia… seems like the government is happy arming other nations with fully capable forearms, knowing the arms may fall into the hands of people who will spill back into US territory and spill American blood, all while I’m left to defend myself with a 10 round magazine and a bullet button on my AR. I’m hispanic, and live in california, but I have no interest in letting mexican cartels take back what they think is their land. Thank you california for making me a laughing stock in the eyes of potential ememies, and thank you America for standing by as my rights are raped. The rights I gave 5 years of my life for in the service.

    • Welcome to the club of White Privilege. You do not have to be a WASP to get the privilege that you will get from our government policies.

  26. Have to wonder if this was paid for with drugs and slave labor. Not that our government would ever have anything to do with them, much !!

  28. Ok guys, we just got out of two wars, and now have BILLIONS of dollars in military surplus laying around. If we sit on it, it will become obsolete, and no one will want it. Everyone’s throwing a fit about how the police here have MRAPs through government surplus. But we can’t send them to Mexico where they’re actually needed either? Who would you rather have those trucks, US police, or a foreign military?

    Also, they are selling milsurp vehicles to the public. http://www.govplanet.com/

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