May 3, 2013: President Obama delivers a speech at the Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, Mexico. (AP) "Most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States," Obama told the crowd. "I think many of you know that in America, our Constitution guarantees our individual right to bear arms. And as president, I swore an oath to uphold that right, and I always will. But at the same time, as I've said in the United States, I will continue to do everything in my power to pass common-sense reforms that keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people.
"That can save lives here in Mexico and back home in the United States," he said.
It's ironic that Obama would lie about his commitment to our Constitution while he's in Mexico. Our neighbor to the south has a similar document that also was supposed to protect the right of citizens with regard to firearms, but generations of corrupt governments have made that right null and void in practical terms. What's left is a situation in which the agents of said government and the gangs (but I repeat myself) are armed, and good people there are left with the choice to be vulnerable or break the unjust law.
ReplyDeleteIt's blatantly hypocritical of you to accuse me of using the work "lie" too loosely and frequently and then call Obama a liar for that. He has a different understanding of what it means to uphold the constitution than you do. That's different than lying.
DeleteAre you shittin' me? The constitutional scholar president thinks the Constitution allows for invalidating Habeus corpus, the due process of law, assassination of American citizens, flying armed drones into sovereign nations and unleashing peace missiles at mourners at funerals, on schools filled with innocent children, murdering alleged criminals in cold blood and tossing their body into the sea. Fuck that, Mikeb, Obama is a fucking liar.
Deleteorlin sellers
I've explained to you what the word "lie" means. It's a statement that the person knows to be false. But perhaps you're right. I should have qualified my comment by saying that anyone who says what Obama says on this subject is a liar or a fool.
DeleteOrlin, now that you put it that way, I kinda agree with you.
DeletePromises are merely inanities without the force of legislative power. As the Constitution vests such legislative power solely within the Congress, the President has absolutely no individual authority to commit the United States to gun reform.
ReplyDeleteIf public safety, rather than political capital was at stake, the President would have spoken about border security, as the proper enforcement of anti-smuggling laws would reduce the number of illicit firearms in Mexico, and would put the remainder at a prohibitive expense. Border security is a two way street. Both nations are to benefit from a reduction of arms and human trafficking.
Most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States," Obama told the crowd.
ReplyDeleteWell, he clearly knows a lot about that.
Even with the guns the Administration sent south through various programs, US guns are still a small minority of the guns recovered there. The high percentage of traces that originated in the US were the percentage of guns the though came from here and tried to trace to here. All of the guns that obviously came from international arms smugglers were tossed aside and not traced.
DeleteEven ATF has admitted that the US only contributes a small part of the total number of guns in Mexico. Obama should know better than to keep repeating this bit of badly defined, misleading statistics.
Either he's telling us the falsehood to deceive us, or he's been deceived by it himself and is shielded from the contrary information by his staff.
"Even with the guns the Administration sent south through various programs"
DeleteWhat? VARIOUS programs?
There was the Fast and Furious program that failed and resulted in over a thousand guns going south. There are indications of similar programs, or of the program being larger than has been admitted, and happening in other states.
DeleteI also was referring to military aid to Mexico, much of which got diverted by corrupt Mexican soldiers--this was a little covered news story during the Fast and Furious investigation. I can't remember the number, but I think it was far more than double the number of guns involved in F&F, and these guns show up as US weapons when they're traced. These particular guns shouldn't necessarily be blamed on the Administration, but they also shouldn't be blamed on American gun owners.
Was that your only problem with my comment?
DeleteI also have a problem with this made-up, ATF-bashing, assumption, which you presented as fact.
Delete"All of the guns that obviously came from international arms smugglers were tossed aside and not traced."
ATF bashing? Oh, I see...you assumed that I meant that the ATF skewed the stats. No. The sorting was done by the Mexican government. They gathered the guns from crime scenes, set aside the ones they thought might have come from the US, and sent them to ATF to trace. Those were the guns that were traced in the study that showed some high percentage coming from the US (can't remember it off the top of my head). That percentage of the guns traced, not of the guns recovered.
DeleteAs I said in the first comment, the ATF also ran numbers on US guns as a total of all crime guns and found a much lower number than the one the media and Administration have bandied about--can't remember the source or exact number, but I'm thinking it was around 13%.
I'll bash the ATF, just like any other department, if and when I see a problem like F&F, the Olofson prosecution, etc. But I'll also give credit where it's due.
And so, from your criticisms of my comment, it appears that you don't dispute the main thrust: that the US only contributes a small share of the guns in Mexico, and that this "majority" of guns coming from the US line is a canard that Obama is either repeating to deceive, or because he's been deceived with it by his underlings.
My ATF bashing is that such an agency shouldn't exist in the first place.
DeleteFor shame, guys--"bashing" "the most hated federal agency in America, surpassing even the IRS in its notoriety."
DeleteWe sort of encounter the chicken and the egg question. Did the guns going south enable drug smuggling? Or did the gun smuggling start to support the drug smuggling? Either way, has the president of Mexico come to the US to take responsibility for the war on drugs?
ReplyDelete