US Government Bureaucracy Smuggling Guns to Mexican Drug Cartels?

A thread running through much of the reporting of violence along and mostly south of the Mexican-US border is that most of the weaponry used by the Mexican drug cartels is supplied by private sources in the US and smuggled south.

"Federal authorities say more than 60,000 U.S. guns of all types have been recovered in Mexico in the past four years, helping fuel the violence that has contributed to 30,000 deaths. Mexican President Felipe Calderon came to Washington in May and urged Congress and President Obama to stop the flow of guns south."

The Washington Post article quoted above refers as you can see to, "Federal authorities" who are charged with gathering and collating statistics relating to firearms. Enter BATFE, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. After examining the statistics published by the "authorities" several US gun rights groups whom the Post refers to as "the gun lobby" found several problems and inconsistencies. Firstly, only an unknown portion of the weapons seized in Mexican crimes were sent to the US for identification and the "authorities" claimed that "80-90% of them could be traced to private sources in the US e.g. licensed gun dealers. When these statistics were challenged and it was pointed out that the cartel members, especially those involved in the Acapulco Police Massacre and similar crimes prefer fully automatic weapons such as AR 16s and AK 47s which are not available from non governmental US sources, the ATF simply discontinued publishing the statistics.

Recently and since the death of a US Border Patrol agent in a shootout  in Arizona, allegations have surfaced that the source of the weapon used in the agent's death was possibly the ATF field office in Phoenix and it's attempt to "pad statistics" by transferring weaponry into Mexico without consulting the Mexican government:

    •    ATF’s Phoenix office allowed the guns to go across the border.
    •    The ATF office in Mexico was denied permission to share this information with their Mexican counterparts.  Believing this was wrong, they went over the heads of the Phoenix office and requested permission directly from headquarters in DC.
    •    The higher-ups sided with the Phoenix decision to withhold the information from Mexican authorities.

If this is true, there are some federal bureaucrats that are in need of serious jail time.

It is common knowledge that the Mexican drug cartels pay their "employees" substantially more than the Mexican military and law enforcement. Thus the desertion rate of Mexican police and military trained personnel is extremely high and these deserters take with them the issued automatic weaponry which was originally supplied by US military and law enforcement agencies.

The efforts by lapdog mainstream media and federal bureaucracies to paint gun dealers in the US as complicit in the ongoing bloodbath in Mexico is one of a piece with the gun control lobby's effort to disarm law abiding US citizens. The apparent attempt by ATF bureaucrats to pad gun trafficking statistics in order to defend their fiefdom and pursue a citizen disarmament  agenda needs to be investigated by an independent agency. It is also time to end the failed "drug war" which like most prohibitionist projects only serves to increase the price of the prohibited product thus generating lucre for criminals.