Archive for April, 2012

Spanish Gun Rights Group Joins IAPCAR

Monday, April 30th, 2012

Original Story VIA:  TheGunMag.com

BELLEVUE, WA – The International Association for the Protection of Civilian Arms Rights (IAPCAR) added the National Arms Association of Spain (ANARMA) as a new member of the international gun rights association working to protect and expand the right to keep and bear arms around the globe. ANARMA joins 19 other groups from 10 countries on five different continents that represent millions of firearm owners and citizens concerned about civilian arms rights.

“Our international coalition is growing by the day with groups like ANARMA as new allies in securing the universal right to keep and bear arms,” said IAPCAR executive director, Philip Watson.

“I think the positive dialogue on civilian arms rights is only going to grow as we’ve recently added the Austrian group SPSC and now ANARMA of Spain as new members.” Watson observed.

As Spain’s highest profile gun rights advocacy association, ANARMA also runs the popular online website (http://anarma.org).

Guy Weisz, ANARMA’s VP of communication technology and press confirmed ANARMA’s membership with IAPCAR.

Julianne Versnel, director of operations for the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and Alan Gottlieb, Chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) established IAPCAR to serve as a vehicle to unify arms rights groups against international threats to the human right of self-defense and the legitimate use of guns.

“IAPCAR strongly opposes any U.N. Arms Trade Treaty that infringes on national sovereignty and the individual right to keep arms,” said SAF’s Versnel.

CCRKBA’s Gottlieb added, “Events over the past decade have emphasized the urgent need to protect the individual right to defend oneself and one’s family against grave threats, including crime, civil unrest and terrorism. IAPCAR is dedicated to preserving this human right.”

National Arms Association of Spain

Monday, April 30th, 2012

The Right to Bear Arms is a Human Right

Friday, April 20th, 2012

by Newt Gingrich

Original Story VIA: Human Events

At the United Nations, the governments (and the dictatorships) of the world are conspiring to deny their people a means to defend their families and their liberty.

The Small Arms Treaty and the U.N.’s project on International Small Arms Control Standards seek to impose global restrictions on gun ownership that would apply to Americans and the citizens of every country that ratified the agreements. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged to support the treaty, an excuse for governments everywhere to empower themselves and limit their citizens instead of the other way around.

As long as we’re limited to fighting over the Left’s gun control agenda we’re debating on their terms. We have to go on offense.

The Constitution does not give us the right to bear arms. It says the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. We already have the right, because it doesn’t come from government—it comes from God.
Our founders understood this right is essential to the defense of liberty. It was a lesson they learned firsthand at the Battles of Lexington and Concord, 237 years ago this week. As David Hackett Fischer’s Paul Revere’s Ride recounts, in order to quench the beginnings of the American Revolution, British soldiers marched to confiscate gunpowder and other militia supplies, an act that they hoped would incapacitate the colonial rebels. Thus, it was in defense of the right to bear arms as a means of securing the other liberties that the first battle of the American Revolution was fought.

As the Second Amendment implies, the right to bear arms isn’t given to us by the government, and it isn’t just an American right. It is a human right. As a fundamental component of self-defense, the right to bear arms is intimately tied to those universal truths expressed in our Declaration of Independence—that all men have rights to life and liberty, with which they are endowed by their Creator. And they have not just a right but a duty to throw off despotic government.

These truths are universal. The Second Amendment is an amendment for all mankind.

Every person on the planet has the right to defend themselves from those who would oppress them, exploit them, harm them, or kill them.

Far fewer women would be raped, far fewer children would be killed, far fewer towns would be destroyed, and far fewer dictators would survive if people everywhere on the planet had this God-given right to bear arms recognized. Mass killings and rapes like those that took place in Darfur might have been prevented if the people had the right and the means to defend themselves. When citizens have the power to defend themselves against a violent and tyrannical regime, governments think twice about trampling the lives and liberty of the people.

The United Nations has an extensive Declaration of Human Rights, including the right to join a labor union and the right to social services and security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood or old age.

Nowhere does it provide for the right to keep and bear arms that in many places around the world is so critical to self-defense. And the Small Arms Treaty is a deliberate attempt to restrict these human rights.

I believe the United States should submit to the U.N. a treaty that extends the right to bear arms as a human right to every person on the planet.

It is critical not just for those living under oppressive regimes, but for the many people who live in conditions in which the government cannot secure their safety. From dangerous neighborhoods even here in the United States to lawless regions of the world run by gangs and warlords, firearms are often the only means of personal security.

When criminals have weapons, taking away the right to bear arms is nothing less than eliminating the right to self-defense. Only the elites, who’ve never had to live in a dangerous place or fear for their own lives, could be so confident that denying ordinary citizens the right to bear arms would make everyone safer.

It isn’t enough to watch people move from one dictatorship to another, nations lurching from disaster to disaster. In submitting a treaty to the U.N. guaranteeing that right, America can represent its trust in the basic decency of millions of people around the world and our belief that the God-given rights in the Declaration of Independence apply to them, too. We can let them know that if they had a government that recognized their inherent rights; a government that understood that they were a citizens, not subjects; a government that understood it is government which is to be limited, not people, they too would the chance to pursue happiness and live in safety.

That’s the message our president and secretary of state should be standing up for, not a document designed for the protection of dictators.

CANADA: Quebec long-gun battle set for June

Monday, April 16th, 2012

Original Story VIA: Sun News Canada

MONTREAL – A Superior Court judge said he will decide next week on whether or not the federal government can begin destroying long-gun registry data related to Quebec gun owners.

Quebec brought the federal government to court in order to preserve the gun records kept on Quebecers. The province wants to create its own registry.

The trial between Quebec and the federal government begins in June. Quebec wants Judge Marc-Andre Blanchard to prevent the Conservatives from destroying long-gun data before June proceedings begin. The Conservatives want to start destroying the data immediately, regardless of the trial.

The House of Commons voted to destroy the registry – including the Quebec records – in February. The bill was given royal assent April 5.

CANADA: Tories disarm proposed new ammo rules

Monday, April 16th, 2012

Original Story VIA:  Sun News Network

DANIEL PROUSSALIDIS | QMI AGENCY

OTTAWA – The Conservative MP who led the fight against the long-gun registry appears to have the backing of the prime minister in shooting down proposed changes to ammunition storage rules that have upset hunters and other firearms users.

“They’re not changing,” Candice Hoeppner told Sun News Network. “So I think law-abiding gun owners can rest assured the storage requirements that are currently in place will continue.”

The Prime Minister’s Office confirmed Hoeppner is right.
“Correct,” Andrew McDougall, the prime minister’s director of communications, said in an e-mail. “Our government will not make changes that unfairly target law-abiding citizens with unnecessary or arbitrary obligations.”

That seems to trump National Resources Minister Joe Oliver, whose ministry proposed the new ammunition storage rules as part of an update of decades-old explosives regulations.

Oliver has said the rules need to be updated “without unduly burdening gun owners.”

Firearms lawyer Solomon Friedman said gun owners need clarity because the regulations are unworkable for people who use firearms as tools – or who live far from police and may have to defend themselves against a home invader.

“We’re going to see a whole new set of traps for the unwary, which is really what these regulations will become,” Freidman said. “What this does is it creates a whole new class of paper criminals – people who’ve committed no wrong, who’ve actually not misused their firearm in any way, but simply because they may have transgressed an administrative regulation they face a
criminal charge. That’s unacceptable.”

VIDEO: NRA Convention Speech ‘Right to Bear Arms is a Human Right’

Monday, April 16th, 2012

Newt Gingrich gave a rousing speech at the NRA Convention supporting international gun rights.

Don’t Blame 2nd Amendement for Mexico Gun Violence

Monday, April 9th, 2012

Original Story VIA: Opposing Views

Submitted by National Shooting Sports Foundation on Apr 9, 2012

During his recent visit to the White House, Mexico President Felipe Calderon renewed his call for a U.S. assault weapons ban as a

During his recent visit to the White House, Mexico President Felipe Calderon renewed his call for a U.S. assault weapons ban as a solution to the drug cartel-caused violence that plagues his country. He also claimed, according to columnist Bill Press, that violence levels are directly related to the number of guns in circulation. Both of these assertions are demonstrably false.

Click here to see our gallery of the most popular guns in America.

Calderon’s pleading for an assault weapons ban (AWB) ignores what multiple studies have shown: that the AWB, which existed from 1994 to 2004, was not an effective crime-fighting tool, largely because they were never used in crime in the first place. Also, since the ban expired, Americans have purchased millions of modern sporting rifles — rifles based on the AR platform whose ownership was restricted by the AWB — yet at the same time violent crime has continued to decline in the United States to its lowest level in decades, demonstrating there is no correlation between the number of guns in circulation and the level of violence.

Let’s take a look at a few other points raised in Press’s column:

“We did a count, said Calderon, and discovered 8,000 American gun shops along the border with Mexico.” This is only relevant if you incorrectly believe federally licensed firearms retailers are somehow responsible for guns going to Mexico. They are not, of course. This is really like saying there are “too many” Ford dealers in a state where there are X number of DWI arrests in which the vehicle driven was a Ford. This also ignores the fact that firearms are only transferred by a firearms retailer after a background check has been performed on the buyer.

“Calderon claimed that in Washington, D.C., the rate of homicides per hundred thousand inhabitants is ‘higher by 10 — more than 10 or 20 than the largest number in any of the big cities in Mexico.’” Even if you assume this statistic is true (I haven’t checked), it is despite the fact that Washington, D.C., has the most stringent gun-control laws in the United States. It’s time to admit it that gun control is a failed social experiment.

“It’s almost as if, like global warming, the issue of gun control has disappeared from public view.” Perhaps that is because support for gun-control laws is at a record low in the U.S., according to Gallup’s annual Crime Poll. The same poll shows that most Americans do not support banning so-called “assault weapons” (even using this demonizing misnomer for modern sporting rifles), the very ban President Calderon and Bill Press seek to reinstate.

The real truth about Mexico and guns has been discussed many times on this blog, but in light of new press coverage of Calderon’s remarks, it bears repeating.

The independent research group STRATFOR — a publication Bill Press cites in his column — has corroborated what NSSF has been saying for some time about firearms recovered from drug cartels in Mexico: that it is erroneous and grossly misleading to say that the majority of firearms recovered in Mexico came from the United States.

Only 12 percent of the firearms misused in Mexico were originally sold at retail in the United States. The proof can be found in the U.S. government statistics in a report released by the independent research group STRATFOR and that the pie chart clearly illustrates:

Also, according to ATF, firearms recovered in Mexico and successfully traced as coming from the U.S. were originally lawfully sold in the United States an average of 15 years before they were seized and traced in Mexico. So that means they were sold long before the “assault weapon ban” sunset in 2004. Good luck trying to find these facts reported anywhere in the mainstream media.

An editorial published in the Miami Herald taking up Calderon’s argument says that bazookas and automatic weapons are purchased in large quantities at U.S. firearms retailers and then trafficked to Mexico. This is ridiculous and patently false. It has been widely documented by such publications as the L.A. Times, Washington Post and CBS News, that the drug cartels are acquiring firearms and serious weapons like grenades from Central America and black market sources. Also, over 150,000 Mexican soldiers have defected to go work for the cartels, clearly taking their U.S. made firearms with them.

Our industry abhors the criminal misuse of firearms, whether on the streets of Miami or Juarez, Mexico. That is why the public should know America’s firearms industry cooperates with law enforcement to prevent the illegal purchase of firearms, most recently working with ATF along the border on a program called Don’t Lie for the Other Guy that warns the public about the serious penalties for straw purchasing.

We can all agree that there are serious crime problems in Mexico, and notwithstanding his factual misstatements, we do applaud Mexican President Calderon’s courage for cracking down on the drug cartels and rampant corruption in his country, that has even reach inside his inner circle. However, laying the blame for Mexico’s crime at the feet of the U.S. firearms industry is more an act of frustration than a crime-fighting strategy, and, as we’ve said before, sacrificing the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans as a means of addressing this issue is neither an option nor a solution.

SPSC – Sport & Practical Shooting Club – AUSTRIA

Monday, April 9th, 2012

VIDEO: Private security guards shoot Somali pirates

Friday, April 6th, 2012

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VIDEO: CANADA – Quebec halts gun registry data destruction

Friday, April 6th, 2012

Original Story VIA:  Sun News Network Canada

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JESSICA MURPHY | QMI AGENCY

OTTAWA – A Quebec judge has put the brakes on plans by the Conservative government to quickly destroy long-gun registry records.

On Thursday, a Quebec superior court decision barred the feds from scrapping the records until court hears the province’s request for a permanent injunction next week.

The province filed the injunction Monday in a bid to prevent the federal government from destroying records kept on long-gun owners as soon as Bill C-19 receives royal assent.

Quebec is planning to create its own gun registry.

On Thursday morning, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews dodged questions about how the government would follow through on its promise to destroy the records despite Quebec’s legal maneuvers.

“I won’t comment on any specific court action, but our government is clear in the defence of the legislation that we have passed,” he said.

A government spokeswoman said that while the data won’t immediately be destroyed, it will no longer be accessible to law enforcement.

Canadian long-gun owners will no longer have to register their firearms as soon as the bill gets the governor general’s stamp on Thursday.

Canadians will still need a valid licence to buy and own a firearm. There are no changes to laws regarding prohibited or restricted firearms.

The mandatory registry for long guns has been controversial since its inception in 1995.

Concerns over gun control are an especially hot button issue in Quebec. The registry was created in the wake of public outrage following the 1989 Ecole Polytechnique massacre in Montreal, where 14 women were killed.

But many law-abiding gun owners felt the registry targeted them as criminals, was ineffectual as a gun control measure, and a waste of taxpayers’ money.

“Free at last, free at last,” Tory MP John Williamson said in the House of Commons Thursday.

 

Pathetic: Obama, Calderon, Press Avoid Fast and Furious Discussion

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

Original Article VIA:  TownHall.com

By Katie Pavlich
News Editor, Townhall

President Barack Obama just wrapped up a joint press conference with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Candadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The three world leaders discussed a number of topics including trade and energy, but what did they fail to discuss? Operation Fast and Furious. Although the topic of gun trafficking was discussed at length by both Calderon and Obama, reporters never asked about Fast and Furious specifically and the two leaders weren’t going to go out of their way to bring it up.

Calderon, as a expected, blamed Mexico’s cartel violence not on the cartels themselves, but on the large “flow” of guns from the United States into Mexico. Calderon reiterated his view the United States should re-instate the ban on “assault,” or semi-automatic weapons. It seems that President Calderon, who is always harping about the “flow” of guns from the United States into Mexico, would have expressed outrage that President Obama’s Justice Department had deliberately placed 2500 guns into the hands of ruthless cartels during Operation Fast and Furious. Instead, Calderon chose to blame the Second Amendment for his country’s out of control violence. Calderon also failed to mention the reason why his people are being slaughtered is because they don’t have the ability to legally own guns and fight back against the cartels. Mexico’s strict gun laws have left its innocent people as sitting ducks.

On the issue of guns flowing from “north to south,” President Obama, whose Justice Department once again, under leadership of Attorney General Eric Holder walked 2500 guns into Mexico, failed to mention Fast and Furious. In fact, President Obama predictably gave himself credit for stopping the so-called flow of guns from the U.S., south.

“When you have innocent families, women and children being gunned down in the streets, that should be everyone’s problem,” Obama said. “We’ve put in efforts to stop illegal gun trafficking from north to south.”

Calderon also gave Obama credit for stopping the so-called flow of guns from the U.S. into Mexico.

Trade Group Aids Texas Gun Seller’s Suit Against Feds

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

Original Story VIA:  The Texas Tribune

A national firearms trade association that boasts more than 7,000 members is helping finance a lawsuit in which a Texas gun dealer is challenging a federal reporting requirement for the sale of long rifles.

The Connecticut-based National Shooting Sports Foundation Inc., whose mission statement is to “promote, protect and preserve hunting and the shooting sports,” is helping finance a legal team for Golden States Tactical, a northern California firearms seller and NSSF member, in a lawsuit that was originally filed by San Antonio-based 10-Ring Precision Inc.

The company took action in August after the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives issued a rule last year requiring licensed firearms dealers in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California to report to the agency any time two or more long rifles are sold to the same buyer within a five-day period. The requirement pertains to rifles with calibers greater than .22 and capable of holding a detachable clip.

The bureau says the move is a good-faith effort to curb the illegal transport of firearms to violence-plagued Mexico. They point to a similar rule that has been in place for handguns as proof that the latest policy isn’t an assault on Second Amendment rights.

Sellers, however, say the requirement is government intrusion hurting their businesses and a power grab by the federal government, which invoked the rule without congressional approval.

“I am basically being asked to do something other than what is required by law by the ATF,” said Robby Betts, a licensed firearms dealer with Golden States Tactical. “I’ve got people not wanting to buy guns now.”

Keep hands off our guns: U.N.’s ‘Small Arms Treaty’ proposal misfiring in U.S.

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

Original Story VIA:  Asbury Park Press

 

With the shooting death of Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watch volunteer who was legally carrying a 9-millimeter handgun, the familiar wail has arisen from our cultural and media elite:

America has too many guns! “Open carry” and “concealed carry” laws should be repealed.

Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, replicated in two dozen states, threatens to turn America into the Tombstone of Doc Holiday and Wyatt Earp. This is insane!

The United Nations agrees. This year, the world body takes up the global control of firearms, including small arms in the hands of citizens.

According to Sen. Rand Paul, the U.N. “Small Arms Treaty” will almost surely mandate tougher licensing requirements to own a gun, require the confiscation and destruction of unauthorized civilian firearms, call for a ban on the trade, sale and private ownership of semi-automatic weapons, and create an international gun registry.

No more Colt .45s in the top drawer or M-1 rifles in the closet.

Memo to the U.N.: Lots of luck.

Forty-five Republican and 12 Democratic senators have declared their opposition to any such U.N. treaty, which means it is dead in the water the moment it is launched from Turtle Bay.

For when it comes to Second Amendment rights, Middle America has spoken — at the ballot box and the gun store. And Congress, most state legislatures and the federal courts have all come down on the side of the Silent Majority.

In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court struck down one of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation, assuring district citizens of their right to keep a gun in the home.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, mentioned as a running mate for Mitt Romney, just signed a law striking down a 20-year ban that kept residents from buying more than one pistol per month.

The new law ignited New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who calls Virginia “the No. 1 out-of-state source of crime guns in New York and one of the top suppliers of crime guns nationally.”

Two New York cops have been shot this year, one fatally, with guns from Virginia.

But there is another side to the gun story, and University of Houston Professor Larry Bell relates it:

“Law-abiding citizens in America used guns in self-defense 2.5 million times in 1993 (about 6,825 times per day), and actually shot and killed two and a half times as many criminals as police did (1,527 to 606).

“These self-defense shootings resulted in less than one-fifth as many incidents as police where an innocent person was mistakenly identified as a criminal (2 percent versus 11 percent).”

The figures tell the story. Along with rising incarceration rates, the proliferation of guns in the hands of the law-abiding has been a factor in the nation’s falling crime rate. And that proliferation has accelerated under President Barack Obama.

According to ammo.net, tax revenues from the sale of firearms and ammunition have gone up 48 percent since 2008, with Iowa, North Carolina and Utah registering revenue gains of more than 100 percent.

Background searches in December broke the all-time monthly record set in November, as 1,534,414 inquiries were made to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System about prospective gun-buyers.

Why are Americans arming themselves? More and more citizens, says the National Rifle Association, fear that if or when they confront a threat to their family, lives or property, the police will not be there.

Gun-control organizations claim that gun ownership is actually declining, that fewer and fewer people are buying more and more of these guns. But the numbers seem to contradict the gun-controllers.

A 2005 Gallup survey found that three in 10 Americans own a gun, that 40 percent had a gun in the house, that nearly half of all men own a gun, as do one in seven women. Two-thirds of all gun-owners gave as a reason they own a gun: protection against crime.

America is an armed camp, with the South and Midwest the most heavily armed. Yet, still, Americans buy guns in the millions every year.

Why? Whatever the answer, it is our business, not the U.N.’s.

Holland to make IPSC shooting sports illegal?

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012

From our friends at the Lone Star Shooting Association

 

Dear friends,

Please read the following about a new law proposed for Holland.  And please answer the Call to Arms.

Call to Arms

In military terms a Call to Arms is an urgent request for action when one’s comrade has an immediate need for help. It is time to drop whatever you are doing, pick up your firearm and go to their aid.

There is a new law proposed for Holland that would make IPSC shooting sports illegal. In fact this law would make all dynamic shooting sports illegal. This proposed law will come up for vote in a few of weeks so time is short. If the anti-gunners are successful in taking law abiding citizens’ freedoms away by passing this law, then the rest of the European Union will surely follow suit and take away the freedoms of even more citizens.

The NPSA is the body that governs IPSC shooting in Holland. Mr. Kees Quichelaar, Regional Director and Eduard Rodrigas, chairman of the NPSA committee need our help to fight against this proposed law.

Why, you ask, should I be concerned about Holland losing their freedom to participate in action shooting sports? You should be concerned because it is a step towards you losing your freedom to shoot the sport you like. Anti-gun proponents will not stop with just shutting down a shooting sport in the Netherlands. It will spread like wildfire through the European Union and the Americas.

The Lone Star Shooting Association (LSSA) is committed to helping our IPSC brothers in Holland. Mr. Saul Kirsch, General Manager Double-Alpha Academy B.V., has posted an on-line petition located on The Truth About Guns website.   Please go there and add your name in support of this battle against loss of freedom.

Click here to sign the petition.

FISAT has named this action “Broken Arrow.”

Act now.  Our brothers in arms need our help.

 

Gary W. Burris

Mexico’s Calderon urges Obama, Congress to tighten gun laws

Monday, April 2nd, 2012

Original Story By Dave Boyer – VIA:  The Washington Times

Monday, April 2, 2012

As he listened to Mexico’s president lecture about the need for Washington to ban assault weapons, President Obama said Monday that the U.S. has an obligation to combat gun smuggling that is fueled increasingly by drug addicts in rural communities.

Drug addiction in the U.S. “traditionally was very urban,” Mr. Obama said at a White House news conference. But that is changing, he said.

“You go into rural communities and you’ve got methamphetamine sales that are devastating, you know, young and old alike,” the president said. “And some of that is originally sourced in Mexico. We recognize that we have a responsibility to reduce demand for drugs, that we have a responsibility to make sure that not only guns, but also bulk cash isn’t flowing into Mexico.”

His comments came after Mexican President Felipe Calderon again called on Congress to renew a ban on assault weapons.

“The expiry of the assault weapons ban in the year 2004 coincided almost exactly with the beginning of the harshest period of violence we’ve ever seen,” Mr. Calderon said. “We have seized over 140,000 weapons in four years … and the vast majority of these weapons were sold in gun shops in the United States. Along the border of the U.S. and Mexico, there are approximately 8,000 weapons shops. That means that there are approximately nine weapons stores for each Wal-Mart that exists in the United States and Mexico.”

The Mexican president spoke at length during a Rose Garden news conference about what is an uncomfortable subject for Mr. Obama, whose administration is under investigation by Congress over the notorious “Fast and Furious” program. Organized by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and overseen by the Department of Justice, the program sent thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels via straw purchasers, or people who legally purchase guns in the United States with the intention of illegally trafficking them somewhere else. At least 300 people in Mexico were killed with weapons provided by Fast and Furious, including U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

Neither Mr. Obama nor Mr. Calderon mentioned Fast and Furious in public Monday. Mr. Obama said stopping the flow of illegal guns into Mexico is a “difficult task.”

“We’ve actually put into practice efforts to stop illegal gun trafficking north to south,” Mr. Obama said. “We will continue to coordinate closely with the Mexican government because we recognize the toll that it’s taken with respect to families and innocent individuals inside of Mexico.”

Mr. Calderon said he appreciated the “administrative effort” being undertaken by the Obama administration to stop gun trafficking.

“We’ve seen a much more active effort in this sense than in any other time in the past,” Mr. Calderon said.

But the Mexican president added that, unless the U.S. enacts a ban on assault weapons and greater gun registration, “Then we are never going to be able to stop the violence in Mexico or stop a future turning of those guns upon the U.S.”

He also ridiculed the state of Texas for recommending that college students avoid traveling to Mexico for “spring break,” saying young people were ignoring the warning.

“There are hundreds of thousands of young Texans who go to Mexico, enjoy it, and … we haven’t seen one single incident with U.S. ‘spring-breakers’ in Mexico this past spring,” Mr. Calderon said.