A tad careless of them, wouldn't you say?

 

The BBC reports that Colombia's armed forces are missing a whole bunch of ammunition and weapons.

Colombia's military has lost millions of bullets, thousands of grenades and several missiles, the nation's president has said.

Gustavo Petro ... said the missing items came to light during surprise visits to two military bases - Tolemaida and La Guajira - on 12 February and 1 April, respectively.

At Tolemaida, there was a shortfall of more than 808,000 bullets and nearly 10,000 fewer grenades than the inventory listed on official records.

Meanwhile at La Guajira, the discrepancies included nearly 4.2 million bullets and more than 9,300 grenades. Mr Petro also said the base had lost two Spike missiles, 37 Nimrod missiles and 550 rocket-propelled grenades.

He told reporters that the military supplies would have been passed on to armed groups within Colombia, but could have been smuggled to Haiti or the international black market.

There's more at the link.

I'm sure the personnel at those military bases were delighted (NOT!) to have snap inspections of their facilities, giving them no warning and leaving them no time to cover up the missing items.  I'm sure many of them made a lot of money by diverting them to weapons smugglers.  I hope it'll be enough to compensate them for the years in prison that will likely be coming their way.

That sort of chicanery is a real problem in the drug wars.  Mexico's cartels are armed with full-auto military weapons that they've largely obtained from the Mexican armed forces and those in countries to the south.  When they have so much money at their disposal, it's not difficult to bribe those in charge of the weapons to turn a blind eye to wholesale theft.  Trouble is, those cartels then turn their weapons against their own authorities, and against the US as well in the form of ambushes directed against the Border Patrol, Customs officers and other law enforcement personnel.  Many such weapons have been found smuggled into this country, and in the possession of local cartel distributors.  The latest one I heard of amounted to more than 20 full-auto assault rifles, more than 100 magazines and over 5,000 rounds of ammunition, plus several hand-grenades and a rocket launcher.  That's enough to give any local police force conniption fits.  They're severely outgunned.

Of course, the gun-grabbers' answer is to blame private firearms owners for "allowing" their guns to be stolen, or selling them to the cartels.  That's largely not the case.  Private owners seldom own full-auto weapons, and almost never explosive devices.  Those are sourced from corrupt militaries more than anywhere else.  It's not a comfortable thought that law-abiding citizens like you and I might have to face up to criminals armed in that fashion.  I feel outgunned already.

Peter