The Obama administration and Congressional leaders are on a crusade to destroy the Second Amendment.

Fueled by a violence-obsessed media, politicians are blaming American firearms for killings by lawless Mexico drug cartels, and they are pushing for sweeping new gun control laws that will punish law-abiding gun owners in the U.S. During a recent trip to Mexico, President Obama pledged to stop the “southern flow of guns.”

“As [Mexican President Filipe] Calderón and I discussed, I am urging the Senate in the United States to ratify an inter-American treaty known as CIFTA to curb small arms trafficking that is a source of so many of the weapons used in this drug war,” said President Obama in Mexico City.

The CIFTA treaty, officially titled the “Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials,” was signed by President Bill Clinton, but never ratified by the Senate.

Supporters of the treaty hope the large Democrat majority in the Senate will lead to a quick vote for ratification. But while proponents claim the treaty is not a threat to the Second Amendment, GOA warns Congress that approval of CIFTA will be an abrogation of its duty to uphold the Constitution.

If ratified and the U.S. is found not to be in compliance with any provisions of the treaty – such as a provision that could outlaw reloading ammunition without a government license – Obama would be empowered to implement regulations without Congressional approval.

Obama is not alone in pressing for more gun control, and more than an anti-gun treaty is on the table. (Visit www.gunowners.org to get the facts about how the treaty could affect your gun rights.)

At congressional hearings in El Paso, Texas, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) called for another ban on semi-automatic firearms and to take aggressive action in the U.S.

Senator Kerry, giving the impression that gun dealers here are as much a problem as the cartels, wants Mexican authorities to work with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) to “identify and shut down the sellers, who are almost always on our side of the border.”

Sen. Diane Feinstein is also aggressively pushing for the renewal of the Clinton gun ban, using Mexico as her excuse. “I am prepared to wage the assault weapons battle again and I intend to do so,” Sen. Feinstein told America from the Senate floor.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder took his seat on the “blame America” bandwagon. “[T]here are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons. I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum,” Holder said.

And as if banning guns and entering into an international gun control treaty is not enough, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered up her own gun control proposal: “We want [firearms] registered,” Pelosi told Robin Roberts on ABC’s Good Morning America.
Pelosi’s comments give a strong boost to H.R. 45, a draconian gun owner registration and licensing bill introduced in Congress by Chicago-based Representative Bobby Rush.

The New Propaganda Machine

The frenzy to pass more gun control is being driven by a misinformation campaign that would have made Joseph Goebbels proud. “More than 90 percent of the guns found in Mexico are not bought [in Mexico], but in the United States,” President Obama said during his Mexico trip.

That 90 percent number has been echoed by the media and anti-gun politicians on both sides of the border thousands of times, leading many people to accept it as fact.

However, William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott set the record straight in a FOXNews.com report. “It’s just not true,” they said.

According to their report, the Mexican government sends to American authorities only those firearms that might have been in commerce in the U.S. The majority of crime guns recovered in Mexico are never sent to the U.S. for tracing.

Of the firearms traced by the U.S. in 2007-2008, only about half were done so successfully. Of that number, 90 percent were traced to this country. That amounts to about 17 percent of the total number of crime guns that are confiscated by Mexican authorities, a far cry from the 90 percent touted by the Obama administration. And even that number is inflated. Many firearms are sent to the Mexico government legitimately in shipments approved by U.S. authorities, but these guns often are filtered to the cartels through disaffected military personnel in Mexico.

For example, according to the FOX report, many of the 150,000 Mexican soldiers who deserted the Army in the last six years took their weapons with them.

La Jeunesse and Lott also question why the multi-billion dollar cartels would “bother buying single-shot rifles, and force thousands of unknown ‘straw’ buyers in the U.S. through a government background check, when they can buy boatloads of fully automatic M-16s and assault rifles from China, Israel or South Africa?”

The Los Angeles Times reported in March that the cartels often use weapons not even available at U.S. gun stores, smuggling them through “Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors.”

The cartels also evade the law through corruption in the Mexican government. An article in the New York Times late last year noted that, “One of Mexico’s most notorious drug cartels made huge cash payments [$150,000 to $450,000 each] to officials in the Mexican attorney general’s office in exchange for confidential information on anti-drug operations…. The cartel might have had an informant inside the American embassy.”

Gun control laws do not reduce crime rates in the U.S. and it is absurd for politicians to suggest that restricting the gun rights of Americans will have any impact on the Mexico situation.

Actually, gun control proposals such as reinstating the ban on semi-automatic firearms will make Americans less safe, especially if violence spills over to this side of the border.

As pro-gun Wyoming Senator John Barasso pointed out during the El Paso congressional trip: “Why would you disarm someone when they potentially could get caught in the crossfire?... The United States will not surrender our Second Amendment rights for Mexico’s border problem.”

Mexican authorities like President Calderón and Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora have their hands full with corruption and violence in their own country, but they continue to call on the U.S. to change its gun laws.

Mr. Mora even lectured that “The Second Amendment was never meant to arm foreign criminal groups.” Outrageously, many shameful American office holders who swear an oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution are all too eager to bow to the wishes of “blame America first” foreign politicians.

All three gun control proposals – ratifying the CIFTA treaty, renewing the Clinton gun ban and registering all gun owners – will do nothing to combat the violence in Mexico, but will go a long way toward eroding our Second Amendment rights. 


John Velleco is a leading expert on the politics and legislative history of gun control. On staff with Gun Owners of America since 1993, John currently serves as the organization’s Director of Federal Affairs. His responsibilities keep him on Capitol Hill on a regular basis, and he has also appeared on various news programs on NBC, ABC, FOX, CNN and C-Span.