Posted on 03/09/2009 4:14:12 PM PDT by AuntB
WASHINGTON — Americans got a wakeup call last week about the threat posed by Mexican drug traffickers when the State Department issued a travel advisory warning vacationers heading for warmer climes of the danger they would face visiting our closest neighbor to the south. The violence has escalated to the point where in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, the police chief was forced to flee the city after drug traffickers demanded his resignation, systematically killing his deputy and three of his men until he capitulated.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has dispatched soldiers and more federal police to patrol the area but so far it's a losing battle. The large population of drug users on both the U.S. and Mexican side of the border represent a demand so great that rival drug cartels are fighting each other for dominance. Mexico recorded 6,000 drug-related killings last year, and the current level of violence is on pace to be even greater in both number and boldness.
American arms dealers line the U.S. side of the border, supplying the criminal elements with weapons while the Mexican government, unable to fully employ its population, tries only half-heartedly to shut down its most lucrative export, drugs. The result is a closed loop that would be comical if it weren't so tragic. The guns flow from El Paso, Texas to Juarez, Mexico, and the drugs flow from Juarez to El Paso. The arms dealers and their defenders fall back on Second Amendment rights to justify making weapons plentiful even as the product that is fought over and defended and distributed is banned in the United States.
What's wrong with this picture? First, the unbridled traffic of guns into Juarez and other border towns should shame even the most ardent member of the National Rifle Association. The NRA, once an advocacy group for sportsmen, has turned into an unyielding opponent of any and all federal gun regulation. Upholding the Second Amendment shouldn't mean flooding a neighboring country with weapons to enhance an illegal drug trade. Guns kill and they should be registered and their owners licensed the same way we regulate automobiles and license drivers.
On the drug side, someone sooner or later is going to have the courage to call for legalization. The demand for drugs is insatiable on both sides of the border, and the world. Going back to the Opium Wars in China, banning sought-after substances never works; it just creates a black market. We should have learned from our experience early in the last century with Prohibition, an experiment that created organized crime, and which was finally repealed by amending the U.S. Constitution.
If Mexico's drug market was legalized, it would put the cartels out of business, and it would allow governments on both sides of the border to regulate drugs. Legalizing drugs is not the same as encouraging them. In this realistic world of the future, drugs would be heavily taxed and would carry warnings about their ill effects in the same way cigarettes are marketed today. Indeed, cigarettes do incredible harm to people's health, far more according to reputable studies than marijuana. Outlawing tobacco is unthinkable because of the huge and ongoing demand, and society has come to terms with that.
Mexico's president says the violence is confined to just a few areas in his country. Still, if an American city had its chief of police hounded out of his job by drug traffickers, and killings had become routine, you would expect the federal government to intervene on a massive scale. When Detroit erupted in riots in 1967, President Johnson dispatched brigades from the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions to quell the violence. We can't tell Mexico what to do, but if American tourists stay home, they'll get the message.
On another note, an interesting article about France selling helicopters to Mexico...going to build them there , too. You'd think by us giving them 1.5 billion this year, they might buy from us......
Sarkozy Says EADS to Open Helicopter Plant in Mexico http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=asg1wU02uMMc&refer=latin_america
Not US guns.
Guns from international trade. Machine guns, sub-machine guns and machine pistols. None of which are practical to deliver from US sources, as the few remaining legal full-automatic weapons available here in the US were either manufactured before 1986, and due to scarcity are enormously expensive, or are not available in commercial channels if manufactured after that date.
Law enforcement and military can obtain the full automatic weapons, but unless somebody is stealing them out of an armory somewhere, or dealing them illegally, there is no way these weapons would be coming from a US source.
I don't accept the premise of the gun angle.
Chavez just bought huge amounts of AKs from China.
“What’s wrong with this picture? First, the unbridled traffic of guns into Juarez and other border towns should shame even the most ardent member of the National Rifle Association. The NRA, once an advocacy group for sportsmen, has turned into an unyielding opponent of any and all federal gun regulation. Upholding the Second Amendment shouldn’t mean flooding a neighboring country with weapons to enhance an illegal drug trade. Guns kill and they should be registered and their owners licensed the same way we regulate automobiles and license drivers.”
Remember Eleanor Clift, the defender of all things Clinton? She’s after our guns now, but wants us all to be druggies!
I’ve been thinking about this ‘gun’ angle the Mexicans are pushing. We know any US citizen going into Mexico with a gun or even ammunition is going to jail. If guns are coming into Mexico from the US it’s under the guidance of those in charge in Mexico and they darn well know it!
That old excuse just doesn’t fly.
I hear ya, I agree with you both. We know Mexico gets grenades from Korea.
Our problem is, the populace will hear Eleanor Clift and her ilk and NO one is going to hear the truth.
We should reject the premise and throw it right back in the faces of the writers as stupid false.
You cannot accept false premise and then try and argue out of it.
So, its not their fault? They were oput into an environment where the US made them grow drugs durring WWII and now they have our guns too? This is Nanny opinion reporting.
Agreed.
This article details no evidence whatsoever of U.S. weapons being moved to the cartels. The pictures I saw from the aftermath of a Matamoros shootout showed a lot of dead gang bangers carrying AK-47s.
Yep, but the media doesn’t see the facts ... Do you think the media knows what you said or do they just lie anyway.
I guess since “It’s for the children” didn’t work, they’re thinkin’ that “It’s for the mexicans” will work.
“I guess since “It’s for the children” didn’t work, they’re thinkin’ that “It’s for the mexicans” will work.”
I think they will use fear. Something like, ‘we must register guns/close down gun sales, etc. to stop these cartels from killing our children’. And keep hitting the lie that our guns are causing all the problems in Mexico.
. . a silly, silly, spoiled woman.
This article is an absolute shame. Eleanor Clift is a menace to America.
Legalize drugs! Ban guns!
Y’know, the worlds’ problems are easily solved if you have the right frame of reference.
Back to the future. Everything that was old is suddenly new again. Anyone seen my bellbottoms?
I don’t buy the guns from America line either. The weapons used in Mexico are full auto. The guns sold here are semiauto. If the Feds and their Mexican counterparts were telling the truth, they’d have to explain how it is that a semiauto magically converts itself to a selective fire weapon.
ATF is always hungry for arrests, because gun cases are actually pretty hard to make in this country, given how small a percentage of people actually violate the law. That’s why they engage in harassment cases like the one
inflicted against Olafson over that malfunctioning Bushmaster.
Now if there were US guns really being converted to selective fire weapons for the Mexican Narcotrafficantes, then how come nobody’s making any arrests of people running underground gunsmith shops for illegal manufacture of National Firearms Act Weapons and trafficking of same? If there was a shop out there doing that, ATF would have busted them by now, and as yet, I’ve never seen one.
In short, for the line of BS we’re being fed, there’s this big fat hole in what the Feds call the “stream of illegal commerce.”
And as far as the AR-15s that are being captured down there goes, the Chinese make a copy of the AR-15 called the QM. The current version is a dead ringer for our current M-4 carbine, and the Chinese have not been shy about applying fake markings to what they produce. For example, I’ve got a Chinese backpack that’s actually fairly good, but it’s a pattern that the US has never used. That didn’t stop the manufacturers from festooning the inside of the flap with fake NSN and DSA stock numbers.
Roll stamping is cheap and if you ordered guns from NORINCO with phony markings, they’d deliver em with phony markings since that’s how the Chinese do a lot of business anyway.
And COSCO is really big in Mexico, so getting a container of weapons in, is no big deal given the corruption down there. Remember the 1996 Long Beach Incident that the Clintons swept under the rug where ATF and Customs seized a container full of Kalashnikovs and ammo? Where do you think that the Chinese started shipping to when it became too hot to ship direct into CONUS?
In short, I strongly suspect that when the Mexicans and their ATF buddies have a dog & pony show, that they’re faking it and we’re being had.
Good catch. The Mexican government is notorious for blaming others for its own transgressions.
“And COSCO is really big in Mexico, so getting a container of weapons in, is no big deal given the corruption down there. Remember the 1996 Long Beach Incident that the Clintons swept under the rug where ATF and Customs seized a container full of Kalashnikovs and ammo? Where do you think that the Chinese started shipping to when it became too hot to ship direct into CONUS?”
“Good catch. The Mexican government is notorious for blaming others for its own transgressions.”
Yup. It’ll be fun to watch Holder squirm when he gets asked where he illegal conversion operations are. Dollars to donuts, he’ll either try to make the questioner the issue, or he’ll change the subject.
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