Make Up Your Own Joke

There’s a joke in the title of this article somewhere.

ATF beefs up efforts to stop gun trafficking

HOUSTON — One-hundred federal agents and other personnel have been deployed to Houston in an effort to stop the flow of firearms to Mexican drug cartels from one of the major sources of guns seized south of the border, officials announced Tuesday.

They’ll spend the next four months in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Houston field division, developing cases against people and groups trafficking firearms to Mexico, acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson said.

Melson said 90 percent of the guns that U.S. officials have traced for Mexican authorities have come from the United States. Of those, most have been traced back to Texas, and within the state most came from the Houston area.

“The ATF has been so successful in developing leads from tracing data we saw the need to relocate personnel and put them into specific areas we’ve identified as areas for gun trafficking,” Melson said. “With this surge in capability, we hope to reduce our backlog in leads and refer more defendants” for prosecution.

The additional personnel — 72 special agents and 28 inspectors, analysts and support staff — are part of Gun Runner Impact Teams, which help support the ATF’s Project Gunrunner, the agency’s initiative to reduce the flow of firearms to Mexico.

Mexico has long tried to get the United States to curtail the number of guns — many purchased legally — that wind up with drug cartels. President Barack Obama has pledged the U.S. will do more.

Melson said the additional personnel will work in three areas: sorting through the backlog of gun trafficking leads received from firearms dealers and tracing requests from Mexico; developing cases from those leads; and sending cases for prosecution.

One of the trafficking organizations the Houston ATF office shut down was a group of 23 people who had purchased 339 weapons in 2006 and 2007, with at least 40 of these weapons having been recovered in Mexico. Two members of the group were sentenced to prison within the last month in Houston federal court.

J. Dewey Webb, special agent in charge of the ATF’s Houston division that includes South Texas in its jurisdiction, said he expects the new personnel to “make an impact in putting some of these trafficking organizations out of business permanently.”

Rifles, Blades of Grass, etc… »« PSH

PSH

Cynthia Tucker, she has it. I could fisk this editorial, but quiet frankly, I’m tired and there’s nothing new presented. It’s like they’re not even trying anymore. I could undo this whole editorial hog tied and blind folded.

Enjoy.

Gun violence is more serious plague than swine flu crisis

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

The deadly contagion is spreading, striking down young and old, well-heeled and downtrodden, sophisticates and illiterates. Last year alone, the affliction killed thousands in Mexico and even more in the United States.

Not swine flu. Gun violence. While federal and state authorities are preoccupied with preventing a swine flu pandemic from overwhelming the United States, the epidemic of gun violence rages on, unabated and little noted.

Last Saturday, George Zinkhan III, a well-respected University of Georgia professor, took two handguns to a community theater and killed his wife, Marie Bruce, and two of her theater colleagues while wounding two others, police said. Zinkhan left his 10-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son in his car while he went on his bloody rampage, according to authorities. Then, he dropped the children off at a neighbor’s house — he explained he had an emergency — and fled, police said.

Don’t expect that this latest mass killing will arouse any more outrage or prod any more public action than those that preceded it. In March and April, armed gunmen of curious motive and deranged sentiment opened fire in a nursing home, a community center, their own homes and public spaces, killing family, friends and strangers.

Among the lowlights of this savage spring were the murders of two children of Devan Kalathat, who shot them and three other relatives before he killed himself; the murders of five children of James Harrison, who killed them before committing suicide; and the murders of the daughter and nephew of Kevin Garner, who, similarly, killed his estranged wife, his sister and the children before turning his gun on himself, law enforcement officials said. The shootings produced outpourings of grief and outbursts of anger but few calls for tighter gun laws.

In fact, state legislatures in the South, including the Georgia General Assemly, have recently loosened laws that deal with weapons in public places. In Georgia, gun owners with concealed-carry permits may now take their firearms into state parks, onto public transit and into many bars and restaurants.

Moreover, the sales of firearms and ammunition have soared over the last several months, sparked by the election of President Barack Obama and the belief that Democratic control of the White House and Congress will lead to restrictions on gun ownership. It’s a strange notion with absolutely no basis in fact.

Witness Obama’s tepid response to Mexican authorities who pleaded for help in stopping the flow of deadly firearms from the United States into the hands of drug thugs.

After Attorney General Eric Holder suggested the Obama administration might push to reinstate the ban on assault weapons, which expired in 2004, the White House received a letter signed by 65 craven Democrats insisting that the president leave assault weapons alone. Obama agreed to do nothing.

We have an odd way of assessing risks. While swine flu may yet emerge as a full-scale pandemic, it hasn’t proved especially lethal so far. Even in Mexico, where public health facilities are not as well developed as in the United States, the death toll has crept past 150 but hasn’t claimed lives on the scale of drug-related gun violence.

Yet, swine flu has prompted the travel industry to brace for a panic; pharmacies report a run on supples of antivirals such as Tamiflu; and the news media have hurriedly produced new catchphrases for their round-the-clock swine flu reportage. President Obama has dispatched Cabinet-level advisers to assure Americans that his administration is doing everything necessary to prevent the spread of the disease.

If only we could muster half that hysteria over gun deaths.

Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor. She can be reached at cynthia@ajc.com.

Make Up Your Own Joke »« 303 Maple Street – The Beginning

303 Maple Street – The Beginning

This is a new feature here at The Real Gun Guys. Periodically I will be posting, all things willing, a fresh installment of the story as inspiration permits. Please feel free to comment. Standard commenting rules apply.

Please be warned in advance that the story may contain violence, strong language, mature situations, sex and whatever else happens in real life. This isn’t a children’s story folks. Having said that, if you’re still willing, I hope you enjoy the story! This installment kicks off the serial with a bang, so to speak.

First the standard legal boilerplate:

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental

All material contained within, even though presented for free, remains the property of it’s author. If you want permission to repost it, please ask first.

So there.

I’d like to thank dixie, Gay Cynic and Árni Inaba Kjartansson for their kind assistance in the production of this story. Your help is much appreciated!

(more…)

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