THE DRUG CARTELS' RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS

The hypocrisy grows all too gruesome: The Justice Department
pronounced the Mexican drug cartels "a national security threat" this
week, even as American gun dealers along the border were busily
arming the cartels' murderous gangs. Mexico complains that American
dealers supplied most of the 20,000 weapons seized last year in drug
wars in which 6,000 Mexicans died.

A vast arms bazaar is rampant along the four border states, enabled
by porous to nonexistent American gun laws. Straw buyers can pick up
three or four high-powered war rifles from one of more than 6,600
border dealers and hand them off to smugglers. They easily return to
Mexico, where gun laws are far less permissive.

Licensed dealers routinely recruit buyers with clean criminal records
to foil weak laws and feed the deadly pipeline, according to a report
by James C. McKinley Jr. in The Times. The countless unlicensed "gun
enthusiasts" free to deal battlefield rifles at weekend shows, thanks
to loophole-ridden laws, are a second source.

The federal government is allowed to only trace weapons used in
crimes and has no idea of the full scope of the border trade, which
accounts for 9 out of 10 recovered weapons.

One dealer exploited the lack of federal controls by packing up his
California shop, where laws were tougher, and moving to the lenient
Arizona border. He is accused of selling hundreds of AK-47 rifles to
the cartels before he was finally arrested in a sting by undercover
agents. He's more the exception. At best, 200 agents work the border
expanse where gun smugglers operate as a "parade of ants," in the
words of one frustrated prosecutor.

There should be enormous shame on this side of the border that
America's addiction to drugs is bolstered by its feckless gun
controls. Firm federal law is urgently needed if the homicidal
cartels are to be seriously challenged as a threat to national security.