Hypothetically, no one likes the cartels. The governments of both Mexico and the United States say they oppose them and want to do something about them, but no one actually believes it in the case of the Mexican government. Why? Because they could have done something thousands of times, including asking the US for help, and they haven’t.
But if I had any doubts about Mexican officials being in the pocket, they’ve been completely eradicated.
See, President Trump has been talking about classifying the cartels as terrorist organizations. This opens up a plethora of tools the US can use to combat them, and considering how they operate, it’s not exactly wrong to think of them in such a way. Their goal is ultimately money versus politics, but that’s a difference without much distinction when it comes to what they do and who they do it to.
And Mexico’s president doesn’t seem to like that, so if he does, she wants to up the ante with the firearm industry.
Mexico’s president on Friday warned U.S. gunmakers they could face fresh legal action and be deemed accomplices if Washington designates Mexican drug cartels as terrorist groups.
“If they declare these criminal groups as terrorists, then we’ll have to expand our U.S. lawsuit,” Claudia Sheinbaum said at a daily press conference.
A new charge could include alleged “complicity” of gunmakers with terror groups, she said.
Sheinbaum said the U.S. Justice Department itself has recognized that “74% of the weapons” used by criminal groups in Mexico come from north of the border.
An estimated 200,000 to half a million U.S. firearms are smuggled into Mexico every year, “60 Minutes” reported in December.
Now, that’s an interesting take.
Why would Sheinbaum object to the cartels being classified as terrorist organizations? She vocally rejected allegations she and her government were in the cartel’s pocket, so why is she so quick to try and defend them here and now?
Seems a little bizarre, doesn’t it?
As for the allegation she hopes to make against the gun companies should Trump decide to act in such a way, here’s what the report from CBS News says about those guns.
A 2023 CBS Reports investigation found that dozens of cartel gunrunning networks, operating like terrorist cells, pay Americans to buy weapons from gun stores and online dealers all across the country, as far north as Wisconsin and even Alaska, according to U.S. intelligence sources. The firearms are then shipped across the southwest border through a chain of brokers and couriers.
That’s right. Even CBS knows that the gun companies aren’t doing anything wrong. These are straw purchases which are already illegal, which are then trafficked into Mexico, which is also illegal, and which we’d love to stop but since the gunrunners likely use the exact same paths used to smuggle people into the country, it’s kind of tricky.
And I honestly don’t think a judge or jury can honestly look at this and decide that yes, the gun companies are complicit in this when they’re doing nothing but selling guns to licensed dealers or routing them through those dealers for lawful sale.
Yet Sheinbaum’s take on this is…interesting to me.
How can you say you oppose the cartels and that you want them out of your country while also defending them? That makes no sense at all unless you remember that people can say anything, but it’s what they do that matters.
I can’t say definitively if Sheinbaum is taking the cartels’ coin, but I can say I wouldn’t expect her to act the least bit differently if she were.
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