Gun Runner Gang Member
Numerous media outlets including The New York Post are reporting that Kyle Leonard is an alleged “Bloods” gang member. He has been videotaped “peddling 22 guns” to an undercover cop. This is an interesting twist, as the media has often reported on the “iron pipeline” that has seen the flow of guns to New York City from the south.
The twist here is that this might not just be a case of lone individuals taking advantage of so-called lax gun laws, but rather a gang-related business.
Election 2010: New York Eric Schneiderman Blames NY Gun Problem on I-95
RocNow.com reported that Eric Schneiderman, Democratic candidate for New York State Attorney General vows to stop “smuggling of illegal guns.”
The news site reports:
“The crime-fighting plan would establish what Schneiderman calls a special ‘I-95 coalition’ with other state attorneys general. The reference is to Interstate 95, the superhighway that runs the length of the country’s East Coast. Schneiderman said the roadway also is used to transport illegal guns to places including Rochester.”
What is bothersome with both Schneiderman’s claims and the reporting by RocNow is that the guns in question aren’t technically “illegal guns.” The guns are perfectly legal in the states where those firearms are sold. Criminals just go to great lengths to buy the guns. We worry that the “plan” from the I-95 coalition would be to ban certain, if not eventually all guns – simply because these are “banned” in New York. That is after all the New York way it seems
The Economist Accepts Mayors’ Data, No Questions Asked
We’re used to biased reporting from the mainstream media when it comes to guns, but we were shocked by the level of biased reporting this week from The Economist. The magazine, which tends to look at the world of business, offered a highly prejudiced and predisposed take on the issue of firearms, following a new report from Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Read more
NJ.com Blames Straw Purchases for All of New Jersey’s Problem
When in doubt blame someone else. That often seems to be the New Jersey way of doing things, especially from its mainstream media. This past weekend NJ.com noted that illegal guns are being smuggled into New Jersey and that this is the reason for crime in the Garden State.
The news site notes that there has been a wave of shootings in the past year, “most of the shootings were drug or gang-related.” Additionally, NJ.com stresses, “New Jersey has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, but contradictory laws exist from state to state, and Interstate 95 and its connector highways have earned the name the ‘Iron Pipeline’ as a popular gun smuggling route.” Read more
Security Management Report Offers Misleading “Facts”
While writing for Security Management, Security’s Web Connection, author Matthew Harwood penned a very biased anti-gun piece that might seem to almost be an analyst report. The website’s name, along with the style read more like a security briefing than a news story – and as such the bias passes as “expert” opinion. This is often a key difference in analyst reports and news stories. An analyst can interject more “editorial,” so something didn’t sound quite right to us. For one thing, would an analyst – a noted analyst – offer this information:
“During his address to a joint-session of Congress, Calderon urged lawmakers to reinstate the assault weapon ban and argued that the rise in gun violence seen in Mexico began when the ban was lifted in 2004, according to Reuters.”
Can we have another fact check on the rise of violence? “According to Reuters” you say, how about another source? But then Harwood, offers this choice quote from Mexican President Felipe Calderon:
“We have seized 75,000 guns and assault weapons in Mexico over the last three years. More than 80 percent of those we have been able to trace came from the United States.”
Ah, no you don’t actually Felipe. So this suddenly seems less like an analyst report and more like a highly biased news story. But then we did some digging, and it seems that Matthew Harwood is a liberal reporter, who pens for The Huffington Post, which included his bio:
“Matthew Harwood is a journalist in Washington, DC, and a frequent contributor to the Guardian‘s Comment is Free. His writing has appeared in The Washington Monthly and Progress Magazine (U.K.) as well as online at CommonDreams and Alternet.”
So it is no surprise that Harwood futher offers choice quotes from other anti-gun zealots, such as Dr. David Shirk, Director of the Trans-Border Insitute at the University of California, San Diego:
“Most Americans don’t want to have those kinds of weapons in the hands of Mexican drug traffickers, kids in the schools like Columbine, but there’s a very powerful gun lobby that conflates reasonable Second Amendment gun rights… with these high-powered and more dangerous weapons that even many police associations in the United States feel should not be on the streets.”
Spoken like a true anti-gun liberal. Don’t you love it when an anti-gun reporter quotes an anti-gun professor and offers an opinion on what “most Americans don’t want.” What I don’t want is to read biased stories that are passed off as analyst reports.
Article Claims U.S. Guns Fueling Mexican Cartels, Lacks Any Counter-Point
It is heating up again. Not the actual drug war in Mexico, we’re talking about the media noting that American guns are fueling it. This is heating up again, and we’re still concerned it could have a major fallout north of the border. Las Cruces Sun-News offered a completely one-sided story on American guns traveling to Mexico, but ignored recent reports of military-grade firepower.
Interestingly the article even mentions how AK-47s were the guns of choice by some gunrunners. It is never made clear whether these guns were obtained legally or illegally, but instead just implies that this is all about gun shows and straw buyers. What also isn’t being mentioned by the media is whether it is even Americans who are doing this illegal gun running.
New Information Comes to Light Regarding Iron Pipeline
The Iron Pipeline – or Iron River – is how the flow of guns from the United States to Mexico is often described by some in the mainstream media, as well as those in high-ranking positions in the Mexican government. The picture is being painted by both parties is that most of the guns in the hands of Mexican criminals are from the United States. This has been debunked many times, but it keeps coming round and round. The Texas Tribune asks this very question in a new feature article:
“Is an ‘iron river’ of weapons flowing south from Texas to Mexico, as U.S. officials claim? Or is that nothing more than a fiction promulgated by a corrupt Mexican government that skews statistics to deflect responsibility?”
The article offers a mostly unbiased look at both sides of the issue, and given that recent reports are talking about “grenades” and “grenade launchers,” can anyone really believe this is about straw purchases being made in Austin and Houston?
Mexican Drug War Heats Up, But is the Iron Pipeline Supplying Grenades?
We’ve heard it time and time again; American guns sold legally in gun shops near the Mexican border are responsible for the violence south of the border. Supposedly American guns are in the hands of Mexican drug cartels, and some have labeled this the Iron Pipeline. But this passage from The Los Angeles Times last week should make you think otherwise:
“Drug traffickers fighting to control northern Mexico have turned their guns and grenades on the Mexican army, authorities said, in an apparent escalation of warfare that played out across multiple cities in two border states.”
No one can suggest that the cartels are so brazen to take on the army with a sporting rifle or surplus military gun bought at a gun shop! And outside of movies, you can’t buy live grenades in gun shops either! This sounds like serious gun trafficking by arms dealers, not the work of a few individuals making straw purchases. Not convinced? Read on, and check out this passage:
“The army said it confiscated armored cars, grenade launchers, about 100 military-grade grenades, explosive devices and about 13,000 rounds of ammunition. Seven men were captured.”
Note this says “grenade launchers” and “military-grade grenades.” So hopefully the mainstream media will stop blaming American guns for the violence in Mexico. Of course any excuse to take our guns is good enough for the anti-gun zealots.
CNN Tracks Straw Purchases, Misses Points
Our friends at Newsbusters.org responded to CNN’s new segment on the so-called “Iron Pipeline.” Thank you to Newsbusters for pointing out that CNN’s reporters essentially crafted a very one-sided and biased piece looking at firearms sales, and in the process never point out that straw purchases are essentially felonies!
Too often the media tries to make it seem that “straw purchases” are legal, and that only when the firearm is handed to a criminal is the law broken! What the media fails to address is that criminals obtain firearms many ways, and even purchasing a “legal” gun for a criminal is in itself a crime. We’re just glad that Newsbusters is also watching the mainstream media, and calling them like they see it.
Human Addiction Permeates Canadian Double Murder
Kawku Grimpong is accused of shooting Ziad Ahmad and Phillip Salmon two years ago in Ottawa, Canada. The CBC is highlighting the fact that the weapon used by Grimpong was a “straw purchase” smuggled into Canada from the United States. The second paragraph of the story tells the reader what type of weapon was used and points out that the “pistol costs less than a base-model iPod in the U.S. The only inference one can draw from this is that Americans like cheap guns over cheap music players. What the story doesn’t highlight is the fact that human addiction, some state sponsored, runs rampant in this tragedy. Read more
