Gunrunner: Part 3 and Part 4

Elizabeth Flores, Dml - Star Tribune

A statue marks the Cabelas store near Owatonna where Paul Giovanni de la Rosa purchased many of the weapons he transported to Mexico.

Part 1: From southern Minnesota to Mexico

Part 2: Smuggler's luck ends at the Mexican border

Part 3: Too many weapons set feds on the trail

June 17, 2010 A web spun of paperwork, money transfers and cell phone calls ultimately brought authorities down on Paul de la Rosa.

Special Agent Pete Vukovich walked up to the gun counter at Cabela's in Owatonna. All around him, people were shopping for firearms -- for hunting, for protection, for sport. There was even a room for vintage firearms.

Vukovich was seeking information about a frequent customer whose buying habits didn't feel right.

Employees there had told agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that over the past year or so, Paul Giovanni de la Rosa had bought 31 firearms on 12 occasions. Nine times he had paid with cash -- from $588.48 to $2,268.32 per visit.

Agents spent two years employing every device at hand to understand how de la Rosa might fit into the growing trade of people legally buying guns in the United States and illegally smuggling them to powerful drug cartels in Mexico.

"These guns are not just coming from Texas and Arizona," said Bernard Zapor, special agent in charge of the ATF's St. Paul Field Division. "They're coming from places like Minnesota and Colorado." Continued

**""Employees there had told agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that over the past year or so, Paul Giovanni de la Rosa had bought 31 firearms on 12 occasions. Nine times he had paid with cash -- from $588.48 to $2,268.32 per visit.""**

Let the above sink in, though way to many will find nothing wrong with this in our gun loving society. These were readily sold without question, obviously, without thinking of contacting the ATF and report what normally would have been questionable amounts of firearms purchases especially in such a short period, even without thinking of possible gunrunning to Mexico, except from the South West gun shops! This is going on all over this country, gun lovers, way too many are frankly incompetent and immature adults, are stocking armories of weapons and stroking them with twisted love and passion and packing loaded for security? in a democracy while calling others, considered enemies certainly not friends nor allies, terrorist for using weapons to fight off occupiers or those that suppress them in their lands!

Part 4: 'Pipeline' feeds river of blood

June 17, 2010 Guns from America sustain Mexican drug cartels' insatiable appetite for firepower and fill the cemeteries with young men.



Father Anthony Anderson doesn't have to imagine the impact of guns flowing into his town from Minnesota and other states.

He hears the gunshots out his window every week.

In 10 years, "Padre Antonio" has lowered more young men into Del Norte cemetery than he can count. He carries a little black book in which he has scribbled the names of dozens of parishioners who have gone not-so-mysteriously missing.

"A man was killed there," he says, pointing to the right as he drives his creaky Ford pickup through the sun-baked streets of town. "Several others were shot down there," he adds, pointing to the left as he runs a stop sign.

Guns from Minnesota and other states, delivered into the hands of the powerful drug cartels, are used here as tools of intimidation, allowing the cartels' illegal enterprise to flourish unchecked. Continued

And the Biggest Number of Customers in the World of Drug Needs are right here in this Country, many being gun owners, legal and illegal!!!!