NRA Will Sue To Stop Effort To Curb Illegal Gun Flow From U.S. To Mexican Drug Cartels

NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre
“No other state has produced more guns seized by police in the brutal Mexican drug wars than Texas,” the Washington Post reported last year in a lengthy investigative report on guns in America. And while some statistics vary, a Senate report released last month said that 70 percent of recovered firearms handed over to the U.S. from Mexican authorities for tracing came from the U.S.

The illegal gun flow from the U.S. to Mexican drug cartels prompted the Justice Department to announce last month that all gun dealers in the border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas will be required to alert the government when “purchases of two or more of some types of rifles [are made] by the same person in a five-day span.” Now, the National Rifle Association is suing to reverse that policy, the New York Times reports today. NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre claimed the Justice Department’s move was just another part of the conspiracy theory that President Obama wants take away everyone’s guns:

“N.R.A. has always viewed this as a blatant attempt by the Obama administration to pursue their gun-control agenda through back-door rule making, and the N.R.A. will fight them every step of the way,” said Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the gun-rights group.

As the Times notes, “Firearms dealers across the United States have long been required to report similar bulk sales of handguns.” Yet the NRA argues that the federal government “has no authority to impose such a requirement on long guns.” A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms official responded:

[The official] noted that the licensing statute that requires dealers to keep records on the sale of guns of all types, and it also says the attorney general can require dealers to report whatever part of such records as he “may specify.” He also said courts had upheld similar regulations in the past — including the rule requiring reports about bulk handgun sales, which he said was an A.T.F.-only regulation for years before Congress, in 1986, passed legislation codifying it in statute.

So while the NRA tries to prevent smart gun regulation in the name of some false narrative that the government wants to do away with the Second Amendment, it seems unfazed by illegal guns fueling the violent drug war in Mexico and on the U.S. border. After all, LaPierre and his powerful gun lobby actually agree with the President on guns, they just don’t want you to know that.