By Dave Workman
Two ranking congressional Democrats are asking for information regarding firearms exports, claiming in a news release that “U.S. firearm exports are responsible for over 37 percent of crime gun traces globally outside of North America.”
In a letter to Jeffrey Kessler, undersecretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Department of Commerce, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Representative Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), asked for information on gun exports after the New York Times published a 2,517-word report on gun smuggling. About midway through the report, the Times says, “Mexican authorities estimate that as many as 500,000 guns are smuggled from the United States into Mexico each year.”
Warren, a career anti-gun Democrat, is ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. Meeks, a New York Democrat, is ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
In their letter to Kessler, they wrote, “As this Administration attempts to combat cartels and other transnational criminal organizations in the Western Hemisphere, it must ensure that the illicit and legal flow of U.S.-made weapons across our borders are not contributing to instability and violence and undercutting the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
Not a New Problem
This is hardly a new phenomenon. And one of the biggest swept-under-the-rug scandals of the Barack Obama administration was Operation Fast and Furious, a “gun walking” fiasco which allowed a couple of thousand guns to be smuggled into Mexico essentially under the watchful eye of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Phoenix, Arizona field office. The effort blew up in the faces of bureaucrats when Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed in a gun battle with Mexican outlaws near the border, and investigators recovered two guns which had been part of the “gun walking” investigation.
But Warren and Meeks don’t appear interested in that debacle, since it happened more than 15 years ago, and under a Democrat administration.
Instead, they have set an April 13 deadline for Kessler to produce the following:
- All BIS conditions associated with license approvals for the export of semi-automatic firearms and associated accessories;
- Number of licenses approved for the export of semi-automatic firearms and associated accessories;
- A detailed accounting and list of prior notifications provided to Congress as required by 15 CFR 743.6 including as stipulated in 743.6(b) since enactment;
- List of countries to which the exports of semi-automatic firearms and associated accessories were approved and volume and type of such exports approved for each country;
- Type of purchaser (wholesale distributor, retailer, individual customer, etc.) approved for the export of semi-automatic firearms and associated accessories;
- Any pre- or post-shipment monitoring BIS has conducted and the number of BIS agents or units assigned to monitoring diversion of semi-automatic weapons into the underground market.
2A Jabs
Buried in the New York Times article is an offhand dig at the Second Amendment. The Times interviewed two alleged smugglers who “said they rely on Arizona’s deeply rooted gun culture and lax gun laws to obtain weapons.”
At another point, the reporter notes how smugglers “provide chilling details of how weapons sold in American gun shops and at gun shows — and increasingly through websites and phone apps that operate like open marketplaces — are funneled to Mexican cartel members and used in some of the country’s most violent crimes.”
Watch for such allegations to show up in campaign speeches as midterm elections loom.
Workman is editor-in-chief at TheGunMag.com
