Jan. 31 — To the Editor:

Today's Portsmouth Herald published a puff piece about Sig Sauer:

http://seacoastonline.com/news/20180130/sig-sauer-receives-granite-state-warrior-award

This is after a story about how Sig fired a whistleblower:

http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/20171029/womans-lawsuit-sig-sauer-fired-me-for-reporting-illegal-gun-shipment

Sig Sauer will sell guns to anyone and this contributes to the power of the Mexican drug cartels. U.S. officials conduct some inspections of weapons transferred to Mexican armed forces, known as Blue Lantern inquiries. Of 52 Blue Lantern checks on U.S.-transferred firearms in Mexico since 2010, Mexico failed (findings were “unfavorable”) 17 inquiries – nearly a third of them. The reasons include inaccurate inventories and non-responsiveness of weapons recipients. Firearms also arrive in Mexico illegally, through trafficking over the border from the United States. It was one such illegally-trafficked pistol used in the killing of Marisela Escobedo, the mother of a murdered young woman who was holding a protest vigil at the state government building in Chihuahua in 2010 when she was killed with a Sig Sauer 9mm pistol. The murderer reportedly admitted that he had killed 11 other people with the same weapon, according to a German investigation.

Bill Kingston

New Castle