The Violence Policy Center (VPC) has set its sights on banning .50 BMG rifles as the anti-Second Amendment group’s latest stroll down “What the hell are they talking about?” lane. In an attempt to preface the convoluted nature of this story, I have to point out VPC’s historical lack of credibility, as this vapid group is known as one of the oldest and most extreme anti-gun organizations in American history. 

The genealogy of VPC’s latest action borrows from the group’s 2022 campaign to influence the Biden administration to reclassify Glocks and millions of other handguns as machineguns. Their logic was based on criminals having illegally converted handguns to fire fully automatic in relatively isolated cases. Biden was likely daydreaming about early bird specials and his 4 PM pre-bedtime snack pack when they asked, but it seems even that anti-gun bed wetter thought twice about a proposal that would have effectively banned all handguns. 

That was VPC’s plan the entire time, and I’ll give them credit for trying to pass it off on a guy who couldn’t tell the difference between a machinegun and his son’s crack pipe. But now, these clown shoes have found a way to recycle the effort and replace handguns with .50 BMG rifles. Their goal is to reclassify them under the NFA and ban future production and sale to civilians, similar to how the Hughes Amendment of the Firearm Owners Protection Act did the same to machineguns manufactured after May 21, 1986. 

“It is indisputable that the majority of firearms recovered in Mexico, and in particular from Mexican organized criminal organizations, originate in the United States,” reads the opening statement in VPC’s criminally stupid propaganda piece. 

First of all, cartel crime south of the border is a Mexico problem, and the harder that country tries to pass the buck off on American gun makers, the more its leadership’s desperation to cover up its own corruption and ineptness is revealed. Second, the abject dishonesty on display currently in the U.S. Supreme Court case, Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, was recently exposed by former ATF agent and author of The Unarmed Truth, John Dodson, who worked on the border for the last twelve years of his career, dealing specifically with firearms trafficking.

“Every year, any 12-month period since 2010 until the day that I retired in 2023, whatever 12-month period you want to run, the Mexican government accounts for about 70 to 75% of the crime guns recovered in Mexico. And these are direct purchases by the Mexican government, or government-to-government sales, from the U.S. government to Mexico. The problem is those weapons are considered U.S.-source, and ATF doesn’t delineate, doesn’t take those out of the numbers when they speak to Congress or when they release the information. They count them all as U.S.-source firearms, and so the American civilian firearms market is left holding the bag and blamed for the cartel violence in Mexico,” Dodson told Glen Beck in a recent interview. 

Unable to comprehend the level of deception at play, Beck asks Dodson for clarification.

“So Mexico is buying this from us, and I assume that those guns are supposed to go to the Mexican government to fight cartels. Are these guns going into the hands of the cartels?” Beck asks.

“Yes, 100%,” Dodson responds. 

A more insidious facet of this scam comes from Dodson’s explanation of how the Mexican government uses American tax dollars to purchase these firearms. 

“The Mexican government says, ‘Well, we need help fighting the cartels,’ so we give them money to purchase equipment and weapons; they buy these weapons directly from manufacturers,” Dodson explains before revealing that half of the firearms are “diverted into the black market,” and into the hands of cartel members. 

This explanation more than invalidates Mexico’s attempt at a $10 Billion money grab meant to cripple the U.S. firearm industry, likely a scheme in collusion with treasonous leftist groups within America itself. Whether VPC is a party to the scam or simply useful idiots deployed to milk it for everything it’s worth is irrelevant. The fact is that they toe the line anyway as part of a disarmament agenda that could one day enslave them as well. Who wants to tell these tools there’s no seat at the table with their name on it? 

“By far the most powerful and deadly innovation available in the civilian marketplace today is the 50 caliber anti-armor sniper rifle,” the propaganda piece reads masquerading as a study.

2023 crime data demonstrates that out of 17,840 murder victims, rifles are used in less than 3% of those instances. If you know anything about how few .50 BMG rifles are sold relative to the overall number of rifles, you’d be as entertained as I am. In fact, .50 BMG rifles have only been used in 18 crimes in the entire history of the United States, and the round has been available for civilian use for over 100 years. 

VPC’s “study” is packed full of deception, but detailing it all here would take too long and likely cause me to reach a level of abrasiveness that would cause my editor to self-medicate. I haven’t even gotten into the fact that many of the firearms used by cartels come from other countries and that the ATF can only trace those of U.S.-source to begin with. What would be the point of banning civilian sales of .50 BMG rifles anyway? With the vast majority of U.S.-source firearms reaching cartels through legitimate Mexican government purchases from gun manufacturers, how would banning purchases by law-abiding Americans make us any safer? If anything, it would make us a softer target. Perhaps we have this all wrong, and the people we should be cutting off is the government of Mexico itself.