Mexico Not Infringing on US Gun Rights, Ambassador Says Dan Freedman - Hearst Newspapers
go to original June 1, 2012

Mexican ambassador to the U.S. Arturo Sarukhan

In a slap at American gun-rights advocates, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S. dismissed accusations that Mexico is seeking to undermine the Second Amendment in order to curb the influx of U.S.-purchased guns.

"There is an urban myth out there that somehow the Mexican government ... is seeking to lobby against and destroy the rights enshrined in the Second Amendment," Arturo Sarukhan said. "This is gobbledygook."

Speaking at a forum on Capitol Hill, Sarukhan said "the Founding Fathers did not draft the Second Amendment to" permit surrogates - straw purchasers - to buy military-style weapons in Texas, California and other border states and ship them to violent Mexican drug cartels.

Drug violence has killed 50,000 Mexicans since 2006, and Mexican officials have cited border-state gun sales as a chief source of cartel weaponry.

Sarukhan praised the Obama administration for requiring border-state firearms dealers to report multiple sales of rifles to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

"The number and volume of guns coming across the border from the U.S. into Mexico has been such that we need to put a dent into [the cartels'] ability to" traffic them, he said.

Gun-rights advocates responded in kind.

"There's finger-pointing at America but no mention of the corruption so pervasive in Mexico," Andrew Arulanandam, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, said when asked for reaction to Sarukhan's comments.

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