The guest column “Guns, not just bullets, need Sig Sauer’s attention” (Sunday Monitor Forum, July 23) follows a mistaken path to the wrong conclusion.
We all sympathize with family members of Mexican citizens who have been killed by drug cartels or corrupt government officials. Our hearts go out to them. It is wrong, however, to lay that country’s difficult problems at the door of Sig Sauer and a U.S. government-approved contract during the last administration to provide firearms to Mexican law enforcement working to stop the criminal activities of drug cartels.
Despite the claim of the writers, most of the guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico are not “purchased legally in this country and smuggled across the border.” The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives put that figure at 12 percent in the one study of which we are aware. Even that number may be too high, since many serial numbers were submitted for tracing multiple times.
Central American government arsenals are the major source of the guns used in crime in Mexico. Defections of soldiers and police officers with their arms cannot be a reason for stopping the legal supply of high-quality firearms to Mexican forces attempting to fight the well-armed drug trade and its rampant criminality.
Lastly, the GUNVOTE voter education initiative attacked in this essay is not a PAC and did not contribute to any candidates.
The pacifistic political inclinations of the writers of this essay are out of touch with the realities of fighting vicious drug cartels.
LAWRENCE G. KEANE
Newtown, Conn.
(The writer is senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation.)