Posted 7/01/2009 05:42:00 PM by Douglas

It's obvious from the headline, "Federal agents hunt for guns, one house at a time," that Chron wants this story to be reactionary, but it's clearly not.

Success on the front lines of a government blitz on gunrunners supplying Mexican drug cartels with Houston weaponry hinges on logging heavy miles and knocking on countless doors. Dozens of agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — sent here from around the country — are needed to follow what ATF acting director Kenneth Melson described as a “massive number of investigative leads.”

Among other things, the agents are combing neighborhoods and asking people about suspicious purchases as well as seeking explanations as to how their guns ended up used in murders, kidnappings and other crimes in Mexico.

“Ever turning up the heat on cartels, our law enforcement and military partners in the government of Mexico have been working more closely with the ATF by sharing information and intelligence,” Melson said Tuesday during a firearms-trafficking summit in New Mexico.

So the BATF picks up a gun from a Mexican drug cartel, traces it to a Houston firearms dealer, then traces it to a tar-paper shack where the resident has bought $15,000 of guns last month. Big deal. This is the kind of thing I want the BATF to do. This does not mean they're going door to door asking for guns. That's ridiculous. But what's even more ridiculous is that a Mexican drug cartel, that's flush with more cash than GM, is dependent on homeless people in Houston with clean criminal records to get guns. "Damn those pesky background checks!! Now we have to postpone our turf war with the Escobars because we can't get legal guns from Houston!!"

The cartels can get fully automatic missile launchers if they want. The though of them going through legal channels for guns is absurd. Drug dealers aren't that stupid, even if our politicians are.