Colin Moore
2/20/2009
More than 50 U.S. lawmakers, all of them Democrats, sent a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to reinstitute a ban on importing assault weapons and have the ATF enforce it. The Congressmen claim that many of the imported guns have wound up in the hands of Mexico's illegal drug merchants.
The ban originally was implemented under the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and the U.S. government can enforce it under provisions of the 1968 Gun Control Act. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives stopped enforcing the ban in recent years, according to the lawmakers.
"As a result, the civilian firearms market is flooded with imported, inexpensive military-style assault weapons from primarily former Eastern bloc countries including Romania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia," the Democrats charged in their letter.
The ATF estimates that 90 percent of weapons seized in Mexico originated in the United States. The ATF will get $10 million from the recently passed Stimulus Package to implement its Project Gunrunner, intended to stop gun-trafficking between the U.S. and other countries.