Austin woman who smuggled guns to Mexico gets 30 years

[jpak]

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/austin-woman-who-smuggled-guns-to-mexico-gets-1775556.html

Calling it reprehensible that American citizens would sell firearms to the drug cartels that continue to kill innocent people in Mexico, U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel on Monday sentenced the woman authorities said led an Austin-to-Mexico gun-smuggling ring to 30 years in prison.

"It's disturbing that we would provide both ends of the drug pipeline," Yeakel said in sentencing Aurelia Ochoa Hernandez, 55. "We provide the market for the drugs here, and ... we send the weapons back to allow the cartels to control their territories and kill innocent people and keep the supply of drugs coming to this country."

Hernandez, a U.S. citizen who lived in Austin before her arrest, is among 20 people convicted and sentenced in the case. Prosecutors said she enlisted her son, Jose Lira, who paid others to buy guns for him at Central Texas gun stores and gun shows.

Hernandez drove the guns to Mexico, where she sold them to Juan Carlos Ramirez Zuniga , a member of Los Zetas drug cartel, prosecutors said.

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but...but...but... the GOP/NRA sez this can't happen!!111

nevermind

yup