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By John Lott - FOXNews.com
Felipe Calderon’s understanding of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban is no more accurate than it is about Arizona’s new immigration law.
During his trip to the United States Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón received a lot of attention for falsely claiming that Arizona’s new immigration law uses “racial profiling.” Calderon’s attacks on U.S. policies continued during his address to Congress on Thursday. Immigration wasn’t his only topic. He spent over four minutes of his address lecturing Americans and calling them on to renew the Federal Assault Weapons Ban that sunset in September 2004.
Calderon’s message was simple: the reason that Mexicans are losing the drug war is because the U.S. assault weapons ban expired. Yet, Calderon’s understanding of what the Federal Assault Weapons Ban is no more accurate than it is about Arizona’s new immigration law. Let’s review the assertions he made to Congress:
– Calderon claimed that these were “powerful weapons.” It is a common misunderstanding as the “assault weapons” ban conjures up images of machine guns used by militaries. Yet the 1994 federal assault weapons ban had nothing to do with machine guns, only semiautomatics, which fire one bullet per pull of the trigger. The AK-47s banned by the assaults weapons ban were civilian, semiautomatic versions of the gun. The banned guns fired the same type of bullets, with the same rapidity, and doing the same damage as deer hunting rifles. Their inside guts are essentially the same as deer hunting rifles — some people just like to own these “military-style” weapons because of the way they look on the outside. The firing mechanisms in semiautomatics and machine guns are completely different. The entire firing mechanism of a semi-automatic gun has to be gutted and replaced to turn it into a military AK-47.
Just as Mexican drug cartels are able to bring drugs into their country, they are also able to bring in really powerful weapons from around the world to defend both their valuable drugs as well their turf against competing drug dealers. Reports indicate that grenades and rocket launchers are not even available for sale in the United States and come from countries such as South Korea, Israel, and Spain. Two thousand two hundred thirty nine grenades were seized by the Mexican government from 2007 to 2009. Similarly, machine guns in Mexico originate from China, Israel, and South Africa.
It is hard to believe that Mexican drug cartels would want to get look-alike “military-style” weapons from the U.S., when they can get the real military weapons elsewhere.-[source]
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