Rich Grassi Explores Clinton-era Report on Gun Violence

In a recent issue of the Tactical Wire, editor Rich Grassi takes a hard look at a Clinton-era report on gun violence in Mexico, some of the conclusions General Barry R. McCaffrey, USA (Ret.) made, and how those conclusions are as fallacious as they are apparently politically-motivated. Seems apropos given the significance of gun control in the current election process — though gun control isn't quite as important, apparently as focusing on the brutality of our nation's police force–who are being murdered on duty, if you weren't aware, at the rate of about one every day and a half right now. Most recently it was a female former Marine rookie on her first day on the street with her Field Training Officer and then a Euless, TX officer just hours later.

Not that we've heard anyone from the current administration address that.

Here’s a quick excerpt.

Sometimes it's hard to find what someone has on the ball however. A person fitting that category is General Barry R. McCaffrey, USA (Ret.) A “drug czar” under President Clinton, the General is apparently still active and seeking something to do. On the internet, I found his “after action report” (AAR) to a visit to Mexico, that visit occurring on 5 through 7 December 2008.

While showing extraordinary good sense in going south for the winter, our intrepid General showed nothing else by way of good sense. In his AAR, subtitled “Memorandum for Colonel Michael Meese, Professor and Head Department of Social Sciences” (sic), he determined that the cause of the massive violence from the Mexican drug cartels along the border was the U.S., specifically that nasty little cultural quirk that citizens can be armed if they want to be.

Let's explore the General's assertions, taken from the .pdf of the memo and found at the General's website on Al Gore's internet.

You can read this article in its entirety — and see how Grassi disassembles the nonsense — right here.

The Tactical Wire is one of the firearms industry related publications many of our writers read on a regular basis. Not necessarily because of the news (we get all those press releases too) but because of the op-eds and commentary at the bottom: features like Editor's Notebook and Around the Water Cooler. TTW's editor Rich Grassi spent a lifetime serving his community as a LEO. As our web editor David Reeder puts it, “Rich has forgotten more about common gunsensical truth than droves of self-proclaimed experts out there now can ever hope to know. He's a good man with a wealth of knowledge and definitely one of those worth paying attention to. Plus, he was great as Sgt. Esterhouse on Hill Street Blues.”

You can follow The Tactical Wire online here.

Take a look at Borderland Beat too (warning — some intense imagery there).