DHS Report - You're Likely an Extremist

Here's the new DHS report on "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment".

If you read through it you will probably realize that you, too, are an extremist:

* Do you believe in the 2nd Amendment?
* Are you against a large tyrannical federal government?
* Do you have concerns about the economy, immigration, trade and a New World Order?

You, my friend, are being watched by the DHS.

Don't Lie to Me About Firearms Smuggled to Mexico

I was positive that the statistics the government quoted on US firearms smuggled to Mexico were flat out wrong.  I kept wondering why a drug cartel would buy semi-auto firearms that were being smuggled in small batches from the US?  Why wouldn't they just buy fully auto rifles on the international market... The whole time they have!

An excellent piece from Fox News lays out the statistics:

The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.

A Look at the Numbers

In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced -- and of those, 90 percent -- 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover -- were found to have come from the U.S.

But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.

In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.

So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of sources:

-- The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.

-- Russian crime organizations. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico.

- South America. During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal Research Division report from the Library of Congress.

-- Asia. According to a 2006 Amnesty International Report, China has provided arms to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chinese assault weapons and Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico.

-- The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.

-- Guatemala. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants, stolen cars, guns and drugs, including most of America's cocaine, along the porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel operating out of Ixcan, a border town.

WITS (NCT)

The Worldwide Incidents Tracking System (WITS) is a link on the NCTC calendar site.  It is a searchable site for terrorist incidents around the world.  You can drill down to region then country to get a report of all incidents going back to the beginning of the tracking system. 

Maybe it's because I'm a geek, but this is freaking cool: http://wits.nctc.gov/Main.do


Resources:
National Counter Terrorism Center Calendar: http://www.nctc.gov/site/index.html
Worldwide Incidents Tracking System: http://wits.nctc.gov/Main.do

NCTC 2009 Calendar

The National Counter Terrorism Center's 2009 calendar: http://www.nctc.gov/site/index.html

It has really good information pertaining to individuals, groups, methods and tactics.