http://www.kristv.com/Global/story.asp?S=10078212&nav=menu192_2_2

Man gets 10 years for smuggling guns to Mexico

BROWNSVILLE, Texas –– A federal judge sentenced to 10 years in prison Thursday a South Texas man who organized a dozen others to buy guns from licensed dealers in South Texas so that he could smuggle them to Mexico.

U.S. District Judge Hilda Tagle sentenced Emmanuel Ramirez, 25, of Brownsville to concurrent sentences of five years for making false statements on firearms records and 10 years for smuggling goods out of the United States.

Prosecutors said Ramirez's ring of gun buyers, all in their 20s, allowed him to smuggle at least 77 guns, mostly Beretta 9 mm handguns, into Mexico during a six-month period in late 2007 and early 2008. Ramirez's lawyer, Ignacio Torteya, declined to comment on who received the stolen guns.

Drug cartel members and other criminals in Mexico, which has strict gun control laws, are routinely being supplied with weapons from the United States.

Thirteen others involved received lighter sentences Tuesday, ranging from probation to about three years.

Ramirez drew an especially heavy sentence because he fled to Mexico three weeks after pleading guilty and being released on bond.

Mexican police arrested him a month later and he agreed to voluntarily return to the United States.

Before that act of "poor judgment," Torteya said, Ramirez was likely facing a sentence of five or six years in prison.

Tagle said she wished the law allowed her to send Ramirez away for even longer. Officials in both countries have said that guns smuggled from the U.S. into Mexico have caused much of the bloodshed in the drug-related violence that has cost about 9,000 lives in two years.

"You play an important role in the shootouts," she told Ramirez. "You make it possible for that to happen."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Mexico Thursday assuring Mexican leaders that the United States was taking greater responsibility for its role in the demand for drugs and for supplying weapons. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano also announced measures this week to combat drug smuggling, including more screening of cars heading into Mexico from the U.S.

The ATF says that about 7,700 guns sold in the U.S. last year were traced to Mexico though the actual number smuggled is likely much higher and that up to 95 percent of the weapons found in Mexico were American.

Ramirez's operation appeared to be a typical example of how the guns are acquired. He recruited other young people to act as "straw buyers," supposedly buying the weapons for their person use. But Ramirez supplied the money to buy the guns and then took them to Mexico.

"You were the one that was at the top of the pyramid," Tagle said.

Tagle initially closed the sentencing hearing at the request of lawyers, but it was later reopened.

Torteya said his client, a married U.S. citizen with a child living in a Brownsville colonia, was no criminal mastermind.

"They paint him out as a kingpin, but obviously he can't be," Torteya said, noting his age and home in a poor neighborhood.

Taggity.

So the smuggling is over!

yea!!

So that whole open border thing is turning around and biting them in the ass when it's our stuff landing in their cities....hmmmmm.

So, if they bring drugs into our cities, it's our fault, but if they bring guns into their cities, it's still our fault?

Okay, I'll play along.

Now let's count how many arrests and convictions there have been from all the shit that's brought into OUR country from Mexico. Let' not even include the illegal immigrants.

Show me the numbers and perhaps I'll give a shit about a few guns going to a lawless, corrupt country. Don't count on it though.

hopefully

Forget bringing him back here, just put him in the Mexican jail for 5-6 yrs +

I bet he doesn't smuggle anything ever again.

Amazing how that works, isn't it?

Top of the pyramid = 77 guns (handguns)

So how do we get from handguns to assault weapons?

The other article provided in my thread about Juan Williams 2 different individuals were convicted. One for 100 long guns and handguns and another for 13 AK type weapons.

So that's 190 guns going back to 2007. That doesn't sound like "A river of guns" to me. 7,000 are mentioned in the article. So should that be like 100 guys arrested and convicted at those kinds of ratios?

The others in the article got lighter sentences...doesn't sound like the court thought it was all that serious if "he was responsible for the shootings in Mexico" - wouldn't they be too?

These are the kinds of guns they show on the news....

In another thread, a poster made the observation that most of these guns the ATF references probably are handguns.

Handgun smuggling does nothing to support a new Assault Weapon Ban., so such details will be conveniently ignored and irrelevant pictures of other things will be shown.

It is probably as much pure journalistic incompetence as conspiracy.