Speaking at the second Conference of States Parties of the Arms Trade Treaty in Geneva, Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu blamed Mexico’s rampant gun crime on the U.S. laws and, in particular, cited the absence of a ban on “assault weapons.”
The second Conference of State Parties of the Arms Trade Treaty began August 22 and ends August 26.
According to Insight Crime, Ruiz praised President Obama’s efforts to secure more gun control in the U.S. but pointed out that “he has been defeated at every turn, even though the legislation he proposed offered minimal restrictions on gun sales and ownership.”
Ruiz suggested guns are simply too easy to acquire in the U.S. She said there “are over 9,000 gun shops and 23,000 licenses have been issued for arms sales in gun fairs and on the internet in the four states bordering Mexico alone.” The report on Ruiz suggests she believes that “supermarkets” in the U.S. are “stocking guns.” And she said it is “as easy to get guns as it is to get a liter of milk or a box of cereal.”
She cited figures showing the U.S. as the source of more than half of the “assault rifles” decommissioned in Mexico from December 2012 to July 2016. She did not mention Fast & Furious, a program under Obama’s DOJ/ATF which ran from 2009 to 2011 and allowed the sale of upwards of 2,500 guns to known cartel straw purchasers. Those purchasers, in turn, were allowed to smuggle the guns from Arizona into Mexico, where they were dispersed to said cartel connections.
Ruiz also omitted reports that 14 Mexican teenagers at a birthday party near Ciudad Juarez were gunned down with Fast & Furious weapons in January 2010 and that a Mexican police chief was killed with a Fast & Furious rifle on January 29, 2013. And she did not mention that authorities found a .50 caliber rifle from Fast & Furious in Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s hideout in January 2016.
The Arms Trade Treaty was fervently opposed by the NRA, Gun Owners of America, and other gun rights groups as a Trojan Horse that would usurp constitutional protections for U.S. gun owners by using borders — and the illegal smuggling of guns across borders — as an excuse to implement international gun registries and restrictions. Secretary of State John Kerry signed the Arms Trade Treaty in September 2013, but the GOP-run Senate refused to ratify it.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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