Saturday, November 14, 2009

The U.S. - Mexico Task Force

The Washington Post reports on the latest from the U.S. - Mexico Task Force.

A binational task force on U.S - Mexico border issues will call Friday on the Obama administration and Congress to reinstate an expired ban on assault weapons and for Mexico to overhaul its frontier police and customs agencies to mirror the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The recommendations are among a broad set of security, trade, development and environmental proposals that come as President Obama and his Mexicans counterpart, Felipe Calderón, move to deepen engagement on issues including economic recovery, climate change, illegal immigration and narcotics trafficking.


Now there's a shocker. There's more to it than guns. These folks are actually interested in immigration, climate change and economic recovery. I thought it was all about the guns.


Mexican officials want a ban, saying that 90 percent of guns seized in drug crimes in Mexico and submitted for tracing to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives originate in the United States, including most assault rifles.

Is anyone still complaining about this? I've noticed in the recent reports, everyone is careful to include the key phrase, "submitted for tracing," or something like it. Is that good enough? Or do you think it's still an attempt to mislead?

Is this very different from that video Sebastian posted the other day in which the speaker said "every single gun transfer requires a background check?" In that case he didn't even qualify it with a parenthetical phrase, we had to understand he was talking about sales from licensed dealers and not including private transactions in his remark. I actually found that quite misleading, but it was my mistake as pointed out by Mr. S.

The problem remains however about how to define "assault weapon." My pro-gun friends have convinced me it's not possible. Why do these politicians persist?

The article pointed out another thing that is sometimes overlooked in these discussions of Mexico. In that country they have strict gun control. When that is mentioned it's usually an attempt to prove that gun laws don't work. But, I say it proves just the opposite. Like Chicago and New York City, the fact that Mexico has strict gun control laws means the folks who want guns have to bring them in from outside. That's why people blame the U.S. for Mexico's gun problem. That's why people blame the "iron pipeline" through which flows a continuous supply of guns to Chicago and New York for their gun problems. Does that make sense?

The solution is obvious. Something needs to be done at the source of these guns.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

5 comments:

  1. "The solution is obvious. Something needs to be done at the source of these guns."

    If guns are truly the problem, logically, gun violence will be most prevalent at the source.

    So why doesn't the US have a higher firearm homicide rate than Mexico?

    If more guns equals more gun violence, then the US should have more gun violence than Mexico. But in reality, it's the other way around. So how do you explain that?

    It's just like Chicago vs the rest of the country. If guns are truly the problem, Chicago should be a relatively safer place than the rest of the country that is awash in guns.

    As I and many others said before, it's not the guns, it's the people.

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  2. "The problem remains however about how to define 'assault weapon.' My pro-gun friends have convinced me it's not possible. Why do these politicians persist?"

    It is possible to define assault weapon, there is already a standard definition in use. The problem is that the Anti-freedom crowd wants to change and manipulate that definition so badly that no two gun ban groups can agree on a definition. Then you throw in the media that uses it for sensationalism and it becomes even more cloudy.

    "The article pointed out another thing that is sometimes overlooked in these discussions of Mexico. In that country they have strict gun control. When that is mentioned it's usually an attempt to prove that gun laws don't work. But, I say it proves just the opposite. Like Chicago and New York City, the fact that Mexico has strict gun control laws means the folks who want guns have to bring them in from outside.:

    Which proves that those laws don't work. Criminals just find new ways to obtain guns while law abiding citizens are left defenseless.

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  3. That's why people blame the U.S. for Mexico's gun problem. That's why people blame the "iron pipeline" through which flows a continuous supply of guns to Chicago and New York for their gun problems. Does that make sense?

    Makes lots of sense. High-crime areas with strict gun laws get to blame their lower-crime, higher-freedom neighbors instead of actually fixing their own problems.

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  4. If guns are truly the problem, logically, gun violence will be most prevalent at the source.

    Yup, but evidence proves otherwise.

    Hell, just look at Chicago (or cook county) They have more restrictions than the rest of Illinois, yet a higher violent crime rate than the rest of the state.

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  5. High-crime areas with strict gun laws get to blame their lower-crime, higher-freedom neighbors instead of actually fixing their own problems.

    MikeB does this on a regular basis, blaming gun violence and crime rates in areas with strict gun control on "gun flow" from other less restrictive states.

    It's not really a surprise given that Mike's not a fan of personal responsibility.

    ReplyDelete