The premium prices Mexican cartels are paying for guns mean that even if the U.S.-Mexican border could somehow magically be sealed tomorrow, arms merchants from elsewhere would be able to fill the void. Indeed, there are some weapons that the cartels simply cannot buy from the United States due to a lack of availability. Such weapons include hand grenades, 40 mm grenades, M60 machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and M-72 anti-tank rockets. Instead, the cartels buy such items from members of the Mexican military, militaries in countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador, or international arms dealers.
Interesting note in the article that cartels are apparently using 80 lower receivers. How far do you go before you’re legally regulating blocks of aluminum? As we have demonstrated, it’s not hard to make a gun, so it’s not surprising the cartels are machining their own from 80 stock.
I’m calling BS on the 80% lowers. It’s not cheaper, and better is available for less money. So why would they do it in any real numbers?
If it’s happening, my guess is because you can drill the right holes to take an M16 parts kit.
I call B.S. on the 80% lower story as well. They want to impose on us serialized upper receivers and barrels as well, and injecting the 80% receiver narrative into the story is the first salvo toward that goal.
Any AR receiver can be milled and drilled for FA operation. Hell, Bushmaster lowers already have the low shelf – all that would be required is to drill the third hole and install the readily available parts.
LOOPHOLE!
Finally, a commentary that acknowledges what we’ve known all along: When you ban a product in one place, it will come in from somewhere else. Didn’t we learn that in the 1920s?
Damn it, tactical machining is sold out of 80% receivers. Stupid cartels buying all the supplies for my hobby.
Just wait until the media learns that you can make a 9mm sub-machine gun from some plumbing parts.
foreshadow |fôrˈSHadÅ|
verb [ with obj. ]
be a warning or indication of (a future event): it foreshadowed my preoccupation with jazz.
I am betting the 80% lower was “dropped in conversation†with the author, who, knowing little about firearms was happy to parrot the word of the gov’t. This now raises the profile of the “unregulated†80% lower as a new “threatâ€.
In order to convince large numbers of people to “go alongâ€, you need a sustained messaging campaign. This was the press “introduction†to the “80% lowerâ€. More will be forthcoming.
Precisely. This is exactly how they did it with the “Florida Loophole” hysteria as well.
You want to end this nonsense, end the War on Drugs. Without the rivers of money they get from artificially inflated drug prices, the cartels would be minor street gangs, not military threats.
Look at the economics a moment.
US Dealer; semi-auto AK-47 lookalike, $600. Buyers 50% commission, $300. Smuggler to backhaul SUR to Mexico, $100 to $150. Total, $1,000 and up – each.
International arms dealer: Current price of real AK-47, with accouterments; arsenal refurb; delivered; less than $60.00. Plus a buck or two each for palm grease at the POE.
Now, why should the Cartels pay fifteen or more times the price for a relative few semi-auto from the States than they DO pay for the real thing from China?
Next, why should the cartels leave these high dollar Sport Utility Rifles next to the corpses of the tortured and murdered police, prosecutors, and the bodies of family members of police and prosecutors?
There are answers to both questions for those who look.
Stranger
You’re missing the point.
The Fast and Furious mass murder wasn’t about the American people, who couldn’t care less what happens in Mexico. It was specifically aimed at the establishment Republicans, who take their orders from the president of Mexico. If someone says, “Republicans need to start molesting their own children or they’ll lose the ever-growing Latino vote,” every David Frum “Republican” will rape his own child, no questions asked. Similiarly, once someone says the word “Latino,” every Frum RINO will immediately support nationwide gun confiscation. Frum himself is already on board with draconian pogroms against gun owners, and inevitably Lugar, Snowe, Collins, Brown, McCain, and Graham will jump on board. That gets us, with a unanimous Democrat support, to 59 votes in the Senate; and, considering how the establishment has been pushing Portman as VP, I suspect he’s a closet squish as well. There goes your filibuster. Once the Senate passes it, the House will quickly cave under the threat of not passing a budget. The “American” “people” will, upon orders from their Hollywood masters, hate and kill gun owners, and the Communist regime that results will last until the end of time.
Or, we can, you know, fight. By which I mean FIGHT, not sit around making arguments that no one listens to anyway.
Latin America is awash in military hardware from the wars dating back the 80s and annually resupplied by US government approved sales to Guatemala, El Salvador & other countries in the region, including the Mexican military itself. We could cut off some of the supply by stopping the government-approved sales, but with the amounts of money involved it wouldn’t be a week before new suppliers were found, FARC’s submarines, for example. Decriminalization is the only solution.