NAU creeping up: Gun hunt cooperation between Mexico and US feds on the rise

They know where the cartels are really getting their supply of weapons.  This has nothing to do with guns and everything to do with merging the Mexican and American intelligence/police communities under the North American Union. Read my 3 for 1 sale for the New World Order article.

Federal agents hunt for guns, one house at a time

6.30.09 / Dane Schiller / Houston Chronicle

In front of a run-down shack in north Houston, federal agents step from a government sedan into 102-degree heat and face a critical question: How can the woman living here buy four high-end handguns in one day?

The house is worth $35,000. A screen dangles by a wall-unit air conditioner. Porch swing slats are smashed, the smattering of grass is flattened by cars and burned yellow by sun.

“I’ll do the talking on this one,” agent Tim Sloan, of South Carolina, told partner Brian Tumiel, of New York.

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.”

All told, Mexican officials in 2008 asked federal agents to trace the origins of more than 7,500 firearms recovered at crime scenes in Mexico. Most of them were traced back to Texas, California and Arizona.

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.

Firearms dealers visited

The ATF recently dispatched 100 veteran agents to its Houston division, which reaches to the border.

The mission is especially challenging because, officials say, that while Houston is the number one point of origin for weapons traced back to the United States from Mexico, the government can’t compile databases on gun owners under federal law.

Agents instead review firearms dealers’ records in person.

People who are legally in the United States and have clean criminal records, but are facing economic problems are often recruited by traffickers to buy weapons on their behalf in order to shield themselves from scrutiny.

Knocks at the door of the shack that looked to be the definition of hard times went unanswered.

“I am out of here,” Sloan said a few moments later, as a pit bull lazily sauntered from the back yard. “I don’t like pit bulls walking up behind me.”

Best information source

On second thought, Sloan switched to Spanish and interviewed a neighbor.

The neighbor said the woman left a month ago after a fight with her husband or boyfriend, who still lived there with what she called “other degenerates.”

“An angry ex-girlfriend or wife is the best person in the world, the greatest source of information,” Sloan said.

The night before, the duo were in a stakeout where they watched a weapons sale.

They also combined efforts with the Drug Enforcement Administration for an aircraft to stealthily follow traffickers to the border.

On this day, agents weren’t wearing raid jackets or combat boots and weren’t armed with warrants.

Guns were hidden under civilian shirts.

Another tip took agents on a 30-minute drive from the shack to a sprawling home with a pool in the back and an American flag out front.

It turned out two handguns, of a type drug gangsters prefer, were bought by a pastor for target practice.

Some stories, they say, are hard to believe.

The lamest so far came from a police officer: He said he bought a few military-style rifles, left them in his car and — on the same night — forgot to lock a door. He couldn’t explain why he didn’t file a police report or why he visited Mexico the day after the alleged theft.

Sotomayor doublespeak: Right to keep and bear arms is not a right

Gun Rights Groups Are Wary Of Sotomayor

5.27.09 / Declan McCullagh / CBS News

Second Amendment advocates are responding warily to President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said on Wednesday that “Judge Sotomayor’s position on the Second Amendment is a clear signal that Mr. Obama’s claim that he supports gun rights is nothing but lip service.”

Dave Kopel of the free-market Independence Institute predicts that “Judge Sotomayor’s record suggests hostility, rather than empathy, for the tens of millions of Americans who exercise their right to keep and bear arms.” And Ken Blackwell of the Family Research Council believes her nomination amounts to “a declaration of war against America’s gun owners.”

The difficulty in evaluating Sotomayor’s views on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is the lack of definitive statements. No old law review articles advocating a Scalia-esque originalist approach have been unearthed; no speeches to the Brady Campaign calling for nationwide gun confiscation have surfaced.

A handful of Sotomayor’s Second Circuit decisions, however, have.

In a 2004 criminal case, U.S. v. Sanchez-Villar, a three-judge panel that included Sotomayor wrote that “the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right.”

Another case involved a fellow named James Maloney who was arrested in Port Washington, N.Y. for possessing a nunchaku — typically sticks connected by rope or chain — in his home. Maloney claimed that the Second Amendment rendered the state law banning nunchakus unconstitutional.

A three-judge panel including Sotomayor unanimously rejected his claim in January 2009, ruling that the Second Amendment “imposes a limitation on only federal, not state, legislative efforts.” All members of the panel agreed with this sentiment, but because the opinion was unsigned, it’s not clear who wrote it.

The trouble with that line of reasoning is that it relies on a 1886 case called Presser v. Illinois, which did in fact say the Second Amendment “is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the national government, and not upon that of the state.” But that was before a long line of subsequent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that applied the Bill of Rights to state governments; the concept is known as the “incorporation doctrine.”

(And, besides, even in Presser, the Supreme Court went out of its way to note “the states cannot, even laying the constitutional provision in question out of view, prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms.”)

That has left gun rights advocates feeling a bit like the decision from Sotomayor’s panel this year cherry-picked cases to reach a desired result — instead of trying to interpret the law fairly. “The Sotomayor per curiam opinion ignores Due Process incorporation, even though any serious analysis of whether the Fourteenth Amendment makes the Second Amendment enforceable against the states would have to address the issue,” Kopel says.

By contrast, the Ninth Circuit, by some counts the most liberal in the nation, ruled in April that the Second Amendment does apply to state laws. Meanwhile, Maloney, the defendant in the New York case, is appealing his loss to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Seventh Circuit heard oral arguments this week in a related case.

Something with a name like “incorporation doctrine” may sound like an obscure topic only a law professor could love, but it’s really not. These disputes will decide whether or not states and municipalities can legally disarm their residents, or whether the Second Amendment right the Supreme Court recognized last year in D.C. v. Heller applies to state and federal laws equally.

In some sense, if Sotomayor holds the same views as the man she’s been selected to succeed — retiring justice David Souter — not much will change in terms of Second Amendment jurisprudence. Souter disagreed with Heller’s 5-4 majority opinion, signing on to a dissent that said: “The majority’s decision threatens severely to limit the ability of more knowledgeable, democratically elected officials to deal with gun-related problems.”

But based on Candidate Obama’s remarks last year, gun owners may have hoped for more. Mr. Obama’s campaign platform said he “believes the Second Amendment creates an individual right, and he respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms.”

Souter rejected the idea of the Second Amendment protecting an individual right; in her 2004 joint opinion, so did Sotomayor. During confirmation hearings, expect pro-gun senators to ask the judge if she agrees more with her predecessor or the stated views of the president who nominated her.

US troops ordered to provide list of their private guns and ammunition

Military Personnel Ordered To Comply With Illegal Private Gun Registration

Infantryman based at Fort Campbell leaks shocking directive ordering soldiers to submit information on registration, location of weapons as well as Concealed Carry permits, order was stopped according to base officials

5.19.09 / Paul Joseph Watson / PrisonPlanet.com

An alarming document sent to us by an Infantryman based out of Fort Campbell Kentucky shows that active duty military personnel are being secretly ordered to submit information to their Chain of Command on how many firearms they own privately, their location, as well of details of any Concealed Carry permits.

Though the order was apparently rescinded, the fact that active duty soldiers are being asked to submit every detail of their private firearm collection is a telltale sign that the second amendment is in dire straights. Furthermore, Alex Jones has personally confirmed that such directives are being issued all over the country.

The directive orders active duty personnel to report details of all privately-owned firearms to their Chain of Command, as well as future firearms purchases.

The memorandum was sent to us by a concerned 11B Infantryman based at Fort Campbell. In his e mail, the man expresses his shock at being ordered to comply with what amounts to a registration of privately-owned firearms.

Read the document below.

“I live off post, with my firearms (which I don’t bring on post for any reason). A very frightening thing happened at work yesterday,” he writes. “I was ordered to fill out a list containing my firearm information. This included make, model, caliber, and serial number of all firearms I currently posses. In addition, I was also required to list registration information, location of all weapons individually, and information regarding any CCW permits I posses.”

The man tried to ascertain why such information was being demanded by speaking to his First Sergeant but was told, “Just put your info on the form.”

“I don’t know how high this goes, but I am hearing that this is going on in other units at Fort Campbell as well,” writes the Infantryman. “It just seems a little coincidental to me that within 90 days: the most anti-firearm President in history is inaugurated, some of the nastiest anti-firearm laws are put on the table in Washington, and then the Army comes around wanting what amounts to a registration on all firearms, even if they are off post, and doesn’t provide any reason or purpose as to why.”

The man said he had been at Fort Campbell for almost 8 years and had never encountered anything like this directive before.

“I fear something really nasty is blowing in the wind here,” he warns.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

However, Alex Jones has personally confirmed that bases all over the nation, including in Texas, are directing active duty personnel to provide the same information about their private gun collections.

The story emphasizes how gargantuan threats to the second amendment are not being reported by the mainstream media nor by big gun groups like the NRA.

A similarly grave threat to the second amendment is the so-called ‘No Fly, No Buy Act’, (H.R. 2401), a bill that will merge the TSA’s no-fly list with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), a point-of-sale system for determining eligibility to purchase a firearm in the United States, Guam, and Puerto Rico.

Since the Department of Homeland Security now considers veterans, advocates of the Second Amendment, and states’ rights activists as terrorists, the ‘No Fly, No Buy’ act would effectively disarm the majority of the entire country.

The language of H.R. 2401 reads as follows: “To increase public safety and reduce the threat to domestic security by including persons who may be prevented from boarding an aircraft in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and for other purposes,” according to the Open Congress website. Govtrack.us reports that the bill was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.

Nancy Pelosi & Eric Holder: We want gun registration, 2nd amendment will be ignored

Pelosi: We want registration; Holder: 2A won’t stand in our way

4.9.09 / Second Amendment Foundation

BELLEVUE, WA – Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on April 7 acknowledged that gun registration is on her agenda, days after Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters in Mexico that the Second Amendment would not “stand in the way” of administration plans to crack down on alleged gun trafficking to Mexico.

“These are alarming remarks from Speaker Pelosi and Attorney General Holder,” said Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb. “It appears that the Obama administration and Capitol Hill anti-gunners have dropped all pretences about their plans for gun owners’ rights, and it looks like the gloves are coming off.”

Pelosi’s revelation came during an interview on ABC’s Good Morning, America. While insisting that Congress “never denied” the gun rights of American Citizens, Pelosi told Roberts, “We want them registered. We don’t want them crossing state lines…” Gottlieb noted that citizens’ rights do not stop at state lines.

“But that doesn’t really matter,” he observed. “History has shown that around the world, registration has always led to confiscation.”

In Mexico, according to the Wall Street Journal, Holder was asked if the administration might encounter constitutional issues as it tries to crack down on alleged gun trafficking. His response: “I don’t think our Second Amendment will stand in the way of efforts we have begun and will expand upon.”

“These comments belie administration promises and Democrat rhetoric that party leaders respect the rights of law-abiding Americans to own the firearm of their choice,” Gottlieb said. “They imposed registration of semi-autos in Pelosi’s California and it led to a ban, but it certainly didn’t disarm criminals, like the convicted felon who killed four Oakland police officers last month. We know from Holder that the Obama administration wants to renew the nationwide ban on such firearms, but that won’t prevent crime, either.

“The administration and Congressional anti-gunners have declared war on gun rights,” Gottlieb said. “The press seems deliberately blind to the statements from Pelosi and Holder, who blame our gun rights for their incompetence in dealing with crime. More than 90 million gun owners haven’t hurt anybody, and they are tired of being treated like criminals.”

Gun sales soaring up across US in response to series of shootings

Gun Sales Up in Binghamton and U.S.

In the City Home to Tragic Shooting and Across the U.S., Gun Sales Are Up

4.3.09 / Alice Gomstyn & Scott Mayerowitz / ABC News

In Binghamton, N.Y., and across the country, firearms sales have been among the few bright spots within the recession-battered economy.

But the shooting that took the lives of 14 people — including the gunman himself — at a Binghamton civic center today is adding fresh fuel to the fiery debate between those calling for more gun regulations and those who argue that today’s gun laws are tough enough.

Watch a special edition of “20/20″ on guns in America anchored by Diane Sawyer Friday, April 10, at 10 p.m. ET

According to a study from the University of Evansville in Indiana, at least 16 mass murders — the deaths of at least five people in a single incident — were committed in the United States since last year.

“We had 10 dead in Alabama, eight dead in North Carolina, 10 dead in California, including two police officers, 12 dead, reportedly today, in Binghamton and our political leaders say we should just enforce the laws on the books,” Peter Hamm, a spokesman The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said Friday afternoon. “The laws on the books are not working.”

Meanwhile, gun owners and merchants, including those in the Binghamton area, maintain that existing U.S. and state laws are tough enough.

“Every time there’s an incident involving a shooting of any kind, automatically the cry goes out that we need tougher gun laws and more gun laws,” said Chuck Sherwood, the owner of Timbercreek Sportsmanshop in the town of Maine, N.Y., about 14 miles from Binghamton. “All we need to do is enforce what we have now.”

Notwithstanding today’s tragedy, gun sellers like Sherwood are among the few business owners in the country experiencing boom times. Sherwood said his sales are up 40 percent over this time last year.

Overall, pistol permits have soared in New York’s Broome County, which is home to Binghamton. The county sheriff’s office has already issued 107 permits in the first three months of the year. Last year, the office issued 237 for the entire year.

“We’re going to blow the 2008 number out of the water,” sheriff’s deputy Brian Curtis said.

Nationally, the picture is much the same.

In the past six months, the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System processed 8.1 million requests from would-be gun buyers (who are required by federal law to undergo background checks before purchasing firearms), a 27 percent jump from 6.3 million requests processed during the same period a year before.

In November, December and January, gun maker Smith & Wesson saw the sales of its handguns and tactical rifles climb 25.9 percent, compared to the same period last year, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Sturm, Ruger and Co. reported a $48 million backlog in orders as of Dec. 31 and a 42 percent increase in sales in 2008.

The jump in fire arms sales, some say, has its roots in both the slumping economy and concerns about future gun-buying restrictions.

During tough economic times, part of what motivates gun patrons are fears that the country’s social order could break down in the face of continued economic decline, said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank.

“There are certain segments of society that probably feel we’re headed for a big depression and it will be every man for himself and you’re going to have to scavenge for your own goods in a time of social breakdown, one of these kind of post-apocalyptic dystopias that many movies have been made about,” Shapiro said.

Another factor motivating gun buyers, Shapiro and others say, is concern that the Obama administration will eventually establish tougher regulations on gun purchases.

It’s about the “ability to have it before it gets overregulated,” said Emil Masata, a member of the board of directors of the Binghamton Gun Club. “The gun laws are so prohibitive now for the most part, it’s a joke.”

As for concerns about any changes that Obama would implement to federal gun laws, the fact is that most gun regulations are made at the local level, Shapiro said.

He said he doesn’t think today’s incident, at least, will lead to tighter regulations.

“Whenever there is a story of a big shooting, it hits the media cycle for a while. Maybe some legislators will start proposing things but unless there is a pattern that develops, I don’t know,” he said. “There are a lot of gun laws on the books already.”

The US 90% myth: Where Mexico’s drug gangs really get their guns

The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.

While 90 percent of the guns traced to the U.S. actually originated in the United States, the percent traced to the U.S. is only about 17 percent of the total number of guns reaching Mexico.

4.2.09 / William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott / FOX News

EXCLUSIVE: You’ve heard this shocking “fact” before — on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.

– Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.

– CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.

– California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: “It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors … come from the United States.”

– William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that “there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States.”

There’s just one problem with the 90 percent “statistic” and it’s a big one:

It’s just not true.

In fact, it’s not even close. The fact is, only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S.

What’s true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency’s assistant director, “is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S.”

But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.

“Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market,” Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.

Video:Click here to watch more.

A Look at the Numbers

In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced — and of those, 90 percent — 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover — were found to have come from the U.S.

But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.

In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.

So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of sources:

– The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.

– Russian crime organizations. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico.

- South America. During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal Research Division report from the Library of Congress.

– Asia. According to a 2006 Amnesty International Report, China has provided arms to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chinese assault weapons and Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico.

– The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.

– Guatemala. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants, stolen cars, guns and drugs, including most of America’s cocaine, along the porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel operating out of Ixcan, a border town.

‘These Don’t Come From El Paso’

Ed Head, a firearms instructor in Arizona who spent 24 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, recently displayed an array of weapons considered “assault rifles” that are similar to those recovered in Mexico, but are unavailable for sale in the U.S.

“These kinds of guns — the auto versions of these guns — they are not coming from El Paso,” he said. “They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don’t get these guns from the U.S.”

Some guns, he said, “are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico, by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S. government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in Mexico that way — the fully auto versions — they are not smuggled in across the river.”

Many of the fully automatic weapons that have been seized in Mexico cannot be found in the U.S., but they are not uncommon in the Third World.

The Mexican government said it has seized 2,239 grenades in the last two years — but those grenades and the rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are unavailable in U.S. gun shops. The ones used in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey in October and a TV station in January were made in South Korea. Almost 70 similar grenades were seized in February in the bottom of a truck entering Mexico from Guatemala.

“Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semi-automatic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California,” according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

Boatloads of Weapons

So why would the Mexican drug cartels, which last year grossed between $17 billion and $38 billion, bother buying single-shot rifles, and force thousands of unknown “straw” buyers in the U.S. through a government background check, when they can buy boatloads of fully automatic M-16s and assault rifles from China, Israel or South Africa?

Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government, says the drug cartels are using the Guatemalan border to move black market weapons. Some are left over from the Central American wars the United States helped fight; others, like the grenades and launchers, are South Korean, Israeli and Spanish. Some were legally supplied to the Mexican government; others were sold by corrupt military officers or officials.

The exaggeration of United States “responsibility” for the lawlessness in Mexico extends even beyond the “90-percent” falsehood — and some Second Amendment activists believe it’s designed to promote more restrictive gun-control laws in the U.S.

In a remarkable claim, Auturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., said Mexico seizes 2,000 guns a day from the United States — 730,000 a year. That’s a far cry from the official statistic from the Mexican attorney general’s office, which says Mexico seized 29,000 weapons in all of 2007 and 2008.

Chris Cox, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, blames the media and anti-gun politicians in the U.S. for misrepresenting where Mexican weapons come from.

“Reporter after politician after news anchor just disregards the truth on this,” Cox said. “The numbers are intentionally used to weaken the Second Amendment.”

“The predominant source of guns in Mexico is Central and South America. You also have Russian, Chinese and Israeli guns. It’s estimated that over 100,000 soldiers deserted the army to work for the drug cartels, and that ignores all the police. How many of them took their weapons with them?”

But Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, called the “90 percent” issue a red herring and said that it should not detract from the effort to stop gun trafficking into Mexico.

“Let’s do what we can with what we know,” he said. “We know that one hell of a lot of firearms come from the United States because our gun market is wide open.”

Ad featuring Angelina Jolie firing gun must not be shown, UK ad watchdog group says

Ad featuring Angelina Jolie ordered off UK TV

3.18.09 / Raphael G. Satter / AP

LONDON (AP) — A TV ad showing actress Angelina Jolie firing weapons must not be shown because it could be seen as condoning gun violence, Britain’s advertising watchdog said Wednesday.

The Advertising Standards Authority said the ad for the DVD version of Universal Pictures’ 2008 action flick “Wanted” breached ad codes and should not be broadcast.

The film follows the initiation of an office drudge Wesley Gibson (played by James McAvoy) into a mythical group of super-powered assassins. The ad for the DVD release shows McAvoy and co-star Jolie wielding pistols, a shotgun, and generally spraying scene after scene with bullets.

The authority said the ad – which juxtaposes images of gun violence with Jolie showing off her bare back – “could be seen to condone violence by glorifying or glamorizing the use of guns.”

It was unclear what practical effect, if any, the ruling would have. The “Wanted” DVD was released in Britain nearly six months ago.

The advertising authority has no power to enforce its writ, but it can refer advertisers to Britain’s Office of Fair Trading for legal action.

Universal did not immediately return an e-mail Wednesday seeking reaction to the authority’s ruling.

The ruling underlined Britain’s sensitivity to gun crime.

There were 59 firearm-related homicides in England and Wales in 2006-2007, compared to the more than 10,000 gun-related killings reported by the FBI in the United States in 2007.

But public concern was heightened in Britain after the shooting death of an 11-year-old boy in 2007. The murder drew national attention and prompted much soul-searching over whether the country’s already strict gun control laws were tough enough.

—

On the Net:

The ASA’s ruling: http://tinyurl.com/c4ek35

“Wanted” DVD: http://www.wanteddvd.co.uk/

Supreme Court upholds ban on gun ownership by people convicted of domestic abuse

Court upholds curb on gun ownership

2.25.09 / AP

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court yesterday affirmed the use of a federal law barring people convicted of domestic violence crimes from owning guns, the first firearms case at the high court since last year’s decision in support of gun rights.

The court, in a 7-2 decision, said state laws against battery need not specifically mention domestic violence to fall under the domestic violence gun ban that was enacted in 1996.

It is enough, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her majority opinion, that the victim of such a crime be involved in a domestic relationship with the attacker.

“Firearms and domestic strife are a potentially deadly combination nationwide,” Ginsburg said.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia dissented in the case of Randy Edwards Hayes, a West Virginia man whose earlier misdemeanor conviction for beating his wife gave rise to a federal felony indictment for gun possession.

The federal government, gun control groups, and women’s rights advocates worried that a ruling for Hayes would have weakened the federal law because about half the states, including West Virginia, do not have specific misdemeanor domestic violence laws.