Excellent Reads

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Are you tired of clickbait and the current state of journalism? This community is meant to remind you that excellent journalism still happens. While not sticking to a specific topic, the focus will be on high-quality articles and discussion around their topics.

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Arming the Drug Wars (2008) (justpaste.it)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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American demand for drugs gave birth to the cartel war that is paralyzing Mexico, but American guns purchased legally across the Southwest and smuggled over the border have made it staggeringly lethal.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

2,000 guns cross the border every day. Even if that figure is halved, it’s a trade worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

That was a tenth of total gun sales in 2008. Sales have doubled since then.

The idea in this story is that if the ATF were allowed to collect the paperwork gun sellers are required to fill out, or if gun sellers sent it to them when they were supposed to (for multiple hand gun purchases), and if they were also required to report multiple rifle purchases, and if the records were allowed to be indexed by name, the traffickers who smuggle them across the border could be traced and caught even while keeping gun sales legal. But these requirements are all opposed by the gun lobby.