Mexico - America's Basement Arms Supplier

Those half dozen of you who drift past this blog from time to time have heard me rant about the AK-47's that are coming north into the United States from Mexico, but this one will blow your skirt up just a little more.

The worst part of it is that it's confirmed - sorta. This morning, I woke up to a telephone call from 'my man in Jalisco'. 

Caller from Guadalajara: "Hey Juan, there are these gringos here who want to buy RPG-7 launchers and rockets. What should I do?"

Juan: "Send them home empty handed."

The Caller from Guad is not an arms merchant. But he knows arms merchants. The gringos in question are a delegation from a Red State in the US and are comprised, near as I can tell at this point of a dentist, two (possibly three) hardware store types, and an equal number of people from the church. I don't know what they do for a living. From what the Caller from Guad said, some learned Spanish undertaking missionary work in the past in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America.

Caller from Guadalajara: "Do you want to talk to them?"

Juan: "No."

He puts the dentist on the telephone.

Dentist: "I'm Dr. XXXXX and we don't want trouble here in Mexico. We're down here looking for some RPG's."

Juan: "Are you frigging nuts?"

Dentist: "Things are getting serious in the US. The Department of Homeland Security is buying 2,700 tanks (MRAPs) to use on us and the President all but said that he plans to use drones to attack us. We need to have something that will be effective against armored vehicles and don't know where else to go."

*******

I am not convinced that the USGOV bought 2,700 MRAPs to use against the lightly armed American public, but I have a few comments for President Obama - who will never read this blog. 

LIGHTEN THE FUCK UP, BARAK. You're scaring the strait, normal God fearing people and they're more afraid of YOU than they are of murderous drug cartels. They want to protect their homes and families against YOUR THUGS. That's just not right (maybe it's 'left').

There is no way to know whether these people took my advice and went home, were robbed, stripped and left by the roadside to hitchhike home or were buried in unmarked graves (common). The cartels and SEDENA have similar methods of operation. The Federales would have taken heavy bribes to release them from custody, etc. None of these outcomes is desirable, nor is the acquisition of RPG-7 anti-tank rockets. 

These guys pull and fill teeth and peddle nails and hammers for a living. They must be insane - or terrified - to be wandering around Guadalajara looking for rockets. But they are. And it is a very sad, sad commentary on the State of the Union in the US.

Full-Auto AK-47's for Sale

Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion has been under a lot of pressure. Ruben Osegevera Cervabtes) (El Mencho) joined with Gonzalo Inzunza Insunza (Macho Prieto) to fight -- just about everyone else. Macho Prieto lost all of M1's crew to the new Arellano Felix Cartel (managed by Joaquin Guzman Loera's sons and Fernando Sanchez Arellano jointly) so he has lost control of his border plazas. 

Based on what I have heard, even though San Luis Río Colorado has fallen to the new Arellano Felix Organization, Macho Prieto still has the stroke to smuggle loads across to the US side of the fence (Yuma). That infrastructure usually involves complicit US Customs officials and sometimes ICE Agents to grease the skids. 

AK-47

While there is profit in narcotics, the shelves of gun stores in America are empty and Macho Prieto will be moving many of the excess firearms that El Mencho has amassed over the past three years. Even though Nicolas Balcazar Lopez (El Bronco) remains in the custody of the PGR, awaiting trial in Mexico City, some of the weapons that his network purchased from the US Government through straw buyers (BATFE-Operation Fast and Furious) may be headed back north. If you buy something for X and you can sell it for X times twenty, it's time to sell. They're American market firearms anyway. Almost all of them are semi-automatic and not of much use to the cartels, which practice spray-and-pray tactics.

In addition to selling the US their firearms back, they are also going to be moving full-automatic AK-47's (mostly NORINCO manufacture), and magazines. They bought them from the Chinese for $3.00 per magazine and Senator Dianne Feinstein, President Obama and Vice President Biden have been bidding them up on the marketplace to $75.00 per high capacity magazine. The NORINCO AK-47's, purchased by container load for under $300.00 each will sell on the street in the USA for $8,000.00 each. It's a good business for the cartels, which have been accused of taking arms from the USA. As one cynical narco told me --  it's time to give back. 

It's a whole new market. In the past, selling drugs meant that the narcos needed to deal with unreliable users. The thriving arms consumption in the US is driven by "Ma and Pa" on the farm who fear their government. Dealing with generally honest people with jobs is something that Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion is trying to get accustomed to, but they expect the pressure from the newly re-innaugurated President Obama to be kept up, thus the demand will only increase for new - still in the packing grease AK-47's. Sadly, there are only about 1,200 firearms sold by BATF to sell back, but the profit is there, so why not sell?

With over 300 million firearms in private hands in the US, the cartel-smuggled weapons will amount to a mere drop in the bucket in terms of numbers, but US policy is helping to keep the cartels employed. For Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, it means a lot because they have fallen on hard times and need all the help that they can get to keep the operation funded.

Rumor only: The Russians and Palestinians are both dumping container loads of SKS style weapons on the cartels to be sold to US consumers. They're effective but dated. They'll sell like hotcakes in the US.

I'm not selling or offering to sell these illegal firearms. I'm just the blogger keeping you readers updated on current trends.