This is a partial paste......
http://www.mysanantonio.com/Gun_Running ... art_1.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Gunrunners' land of plenty
By Todd Bensman | Express-News
AGUASCALIENTES, Mexico — In the vivid dreams that now comfort 17-year-old Angelica Navarro Calderon, her father often comes to visit, dressed in his police uniform. The bullet hole between his eyes has vanished. Nine other bullet wounds in his chest, arms, leg and back are healing beneath white bandages.
Father and daughter banter about life, just like they did before narcotics traffickers killed him and three other police officers at noon on a busy street last year on a day now known as "Black Thursday." She recounted her dreams in the cluttered three-room family home, where a photo of José Juan Navarro Rincón adorns a living room wall and his desk. He looks military proud under his service cap.
"I dream that he is planning my birthday parties once again, and that we are all together talking again," Angélica, one of his three children, said through an interpreter. "In that dream, my father is making my mother laugh. He told me to watch over her. And then he said, ‘It doesn’t matter, it was my turn.’."
Angélica’s father had worn a police badge for 23 years in this Central Mexico state capital, rising to subcommandante and, at 40, was nearing retirement. The hail of bullets came so fast neither he nor his fellow officers had time to fire a shot.
Even if they had, their old .38 caliber revolvers would have been no match for some of the weapons that the cartel gunmen wielded that day: armor-penetrating assault rifles and semi-automatic pistols.
It’s against the law to own or sell such guns under Mexico’s strict regulations, but as cartels on the warpath know, they are readily, abundantly and legally available at the Main Street sporting goods stores and gun shows of the United States.
Texas is the cartels’ best source for the tools of their trade. From here — the epicenter of gunrunning — thousands of weapons every year follow ever-shifting spider veins of smuggling routes into Mexico.
The cash-rich cartels pay handsomely for "straw buyers"— people with a clean criminal record who can easily skirt gun laws without suspicion — to acquire the lethal firepower from licensed retailers, gun shows and private sellers, sometimes leaving no paper trail.
Some of the guns found amid the carnage in Aguascalientes, including a Walther G22 assault-style rifle and a Beretta M9 semi-automatic handgun, began their 475-mile journey in Laredo. Sold legally from a cramped store overlooking the Rio Grande, they were then resold, smuggled, stashed, handed off, and left by the narcos at the bloody scene of Black Thursday. Now, they rest in a Mexican army vault.
One man who profited from their sale told the Express-News he used the money for a down payment on a house in Laredo, hoping to excape the violence in Mexico.
U.S. law enforcement officials find themselves hamstrung in a much vaunted cooperative effort with Mexico to cut the supply lines, as the subsequent hunt for those who smuggled the guns from Laredo shows.
Proximity and the sheer number of gun dealers make Texas a prime shopping destination.
