Whipped Cream Difficulties

I go out of town for a few days. I come back, and l’affair Ward is still ongoing.

Today’s update: the head of the police union is “troubled” by the dismissal of the DWI charges. And well he should be; as I noted in the previous post, there’s three possible explanations, and two of those make the cops look bad. I haven’t watched the video yet, and I’m not sure doing so would do any good. I don’t have the level of expertise needed to judge if Mr. Ward passed or failed the sobriety tests. But in any case, the union’s right on this one. The county DA owes the citizens a full and complete explanation of why the charges were dismissed, and if wrongdoing or incompetence on the part of the APD were part of the equation, Chief Acevedo needs to address those issues.

In other news from the Statesman, their editorial board would like for us to know that guns are making their way across the border illegally. The editorial is devoted to lobbying for a plan to have Texas DPS set up checkpoints to stop “illegal weapons trafficking”. There are plenty of interesting questions that this editorial ignores:

• “The weapon used to kill U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Jorge Zapata in February made its way south to Mexico from Dallas. Though the gun was legally purchased, it was smuggled into Mexico, where legal possession of firearms is restricted.” I’m trying to dig up more information on Officer Zapata’s killing, but what I’ve found so far is that he was killed by the Zeta cartel. So is the Statesman stating that US citizens who are Zeta cartel members are legally buying weapons in Dallas? Or are they having other people buy weapons for them in Dallas? That would be an illegal “straw man” purchase. And if Officer Zapata was shot with an actual “AK-47”, as I’ve seen in some reports, it is highly improbable that was purchased in Dallas.
• Why do we need to use scarce Texas DPS resources to set up random checkpoints for weapons near the border? Why aren’t the existing checkpoints at the border working?
• It is curious that the Statesman manages to write an entire editorial about illegal traffic of guns to Mexico without mentioning “Operation Gunwalker“.
• “”According to CNN … over 70 percent of the 29,284 firearms recovered from crime scenes in Mexico in 2009 and 2010 were traced to the United States.” As we’ve discussed previously, is that 70% of the total firearms, or 70% of the total firearms submitted for tracing? If you dig deeper into these reports, a large percentage of firearms recovered aren’t submitted for tracing in the first place, because they can’t be traced, because they don’t have identifying markings, because they’re coming from South America or other countries.

I’ve just started listening to this week’s Vicious Circle podcast. (Warning: Vicious Circle is frequently not safe for work. Or basic human decency.) My great and good friend Weer’d Beard, among other folks, has some excellent points. What makes more sense? Cartel members are coming across the border to Houston, Dallas, and other Texas cities, paying $600 each across the counter for truckloads of WASR-10s and other semi-automatic AK-47 clones? And then they’re smuggling those clones back across the border, where they’re converted to full-auto and supplied to the cartels? Or the cartels are using weapons diverted from the Mexican army, and the reason those weapons trace back to the US is that we sold them to the Mexican army in the first place?

As Weer’d notes, it doesn’t take a lot to get folks to defect from the Mexican army; hell, the cartels are putting up “help wanted” signs, promising potential defectors that they won’t have to eat ramen. And somehow Mexico believes that the US is responsible for their lawless society?

I haven’t heard anyone ask the key question, especially in light of “Operation Gunwalker”: why does the BATFE continue to exist? Seriously, why do we need this agency? The tax collection functions can be handled by the Treasury Department, as purely administrative issues. The law enforcement portion of BATFE’s mandate could easily be taken over by the FBI, and BATFE’s budget freed up for something more productive; perhaps providing free ukulele picks to the poor, to steal a memorable line from Roger Ebert.

Edited to add 6/22: Well, this is interesting as all get out. Dave Hardy over at “Arms and the Law” has a link to the PDF of a letter sent by Senator Grassley to acting BATFE director Melson. Nut graph:

The most noteworthy portion of the information is that nearly 78% of firearms traced in 2009 and 66% of firearms traced in 2010 were assigned to a catchall category “No Final Sale Dealer” which means the firearms did not trace back to a United States FFL.

Also interesting:

Data indicates that the top source dealer for illegal firearms traced in Mexico for 2009 was “Direccion General De Industria Milita” or the Directorate General of Military Industry in Mexico. They provided 120 firearms that were later traced back, likely after a crime. Why does this entity have a U.S. Federal Firearms License? Are sales to this and other foreign entities with U.S. FFL’s included in the numbers the ATF provided as being a gun from a “U.S. Source”. If so, why?