Last month 15 armed men stormed into the home of Edelmiro Cavasos, the newly-elected and well-liked mayor of the tourist town of Santiago, Mexico, and kidnapped him. Days later, his body was found on the side of a road outside the town of Monterrey.
Cavasos is the third Mexican mayor in just a few weeks to have been murdered by gun-toting drug traffickers, according to government officials. He's one of 28,000 Mexicans who have died over the past four years in drug-gang-fueled violence -- violence that has some of its roots in the weak gun laws of the United States.
The Obama administration has begun to speak about Mexican gang violence and acknowledge that the problem warrants more of our attention. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Mexico's drug-trafficking gangs were starting to resemble an insurgency, similar to the elements that corrupted Colombia.
She applauded Mexican President Felipe Calderon for his "courage and commitment" to rooting out the druglords, and hinted that greater military cooperation between the U.S., Mexico and Central American countries might be a more effective way to crack down on the traffickers and their violence.
But what Secretary Clinton and President Obama have neglected to say is more noteworthy. Neither the president nor the secretary has mentioned the importance of the U.S. restricting assault weapons or requiring Brady criminal background checks for all gun purchases at gun shows.
Violence in Mexico has increased since Congress allowed the federal assault weapons ban to expire in 2004. And a study just released by the Woodrow Wilson Center and the University of San Diego matches Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence reports, which confirm that a significant number of the guns used in Mexican drug crimes come from America.
A Sunday Washington Post editorial highlighted this report that said "at least 62,800 of the more than 80,000 firearms confiscated by Mexican authorities from December 2006 to February 2010 came from the United States. ...The top two firearms for the gangs are assault rifles: Romanian-made AK-47s and clones of the Bushmaster AR-15."
The editorial noted also that "Just one gun store in Houston supplied 339 assault weapons, rifles and pistols to cartel buyers in just 15 months -- which were responsible for the deaths of 18 Mexican law enforcement officers and civilians."
President Obama has not taken steps to shut down the gun-trafficking pipelines in the United States that are helping the cartels outgun Mexican police and federal agents and he still has not nominated a director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).
Without a chief, the top federal agency in charge of stemming the tide of illegal guns that circulate inside and outside of our borders can't help but be weaker and less effective, making Americans and Mexicans less safe.
It's good to see the White House begin to acknowledge the seriousness of the drug gang violence in Mexico -- especially in the cities and towns that border the United States -- and which some observers consider a national security threat. But as long as our government officials fail to adopt, strengthen, and enforce laws that could help protect brave men like Edelmiro Cavasos, along with countless everyday Americans, the risks increase for all of us.
Paul Helmke is president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Follow the Brady Campaign on Facebook and Twitter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiLIouatTkE
grenades:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/16/AR2010071606252.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
And other weapons, such as the 27,000 weapons missing from the Guatemalan inventory:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52816
Again, Helmke depends on swaying the uninformed to create political pressure, he knows these facts, but they will not deter him. All we can do is keep calling him out on them.
Gee, maybe that's because there isn't a shred of evidence either action would make the slightest difference in violent crime rates here or in Mexico. The notion that cartel members would just give up their violence, stop trying to get weapons, and join the rotory club because of some restrictions on the cosmetic features of certain firearms is laughable. And seeing as they frequently disregard the law against murder, it's kind of hard to see how they would be effected more regulations involved with legal gun sales.
As it turns out, our government is selling them. Not to us, though. To everyone else.
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52816
If the Brady Fairy waived her magic wand and, all of a sudden, firearms everywhere ceased to function . . . in about 15 minutes Mexican gangs (among others) would be hacking away with machetes at federales, politicians, innocent bystanders, and the competition.
So, how to dismantle the industry? Humans being what we are, government cannot control the demand. Likewise the supply, without even more ruinously expensive and intrusive law enforcement measures resulting in unacceptable disruptions to (a) international relations, (b) cross-border trade, (c) the US economy generally, and (d) civil rights. Drive down profits, and the violence evaporates.
Very true. See: Parts of Africa.
See those NFA Title 2 restricted uppers on those carbines? Those guns are select-fire NFA Title 2 restricted M4's manufactured for the *military and police* market, not the US civilian market. Those aren't civilian uppers, and possession by a US civilian without a Form 4 is a 10-year felony.
Ditto for the M203 grenade launchers, M203 rounds, and hand grenades in that photo. Every single one of those is an automatic 10-year Federal felony to possess in the US outside of police/military duty, unless you first obtain a BATFE Form 4 or are a government supplier. I see a few civilian-looking guns in the mix, but most weapons in that photo were manufactured for and sold to a GOVERNMENT (namely, the Mexican government) and were diverted from there.
Another:
http://www.contempomag.com/seized-Mexican-weapons.jpg
I see a belt-fed machinegun, a military rocket launcher, grenades, and an M4 carbine with a NFA Title II military/government restricted upper, all of which are made in the USA but are NOT made for the civilian market. Possession of ANY of those by a U.S. civilian without a Form 4 would be a 10-year felony.
Conflating M16's and M4's stolen from the Mexican government with non-automatic US civilian guns, and conflating ex-Warsaw-Pact AK-47 assault rifles from Central America with US-market non-automatic civilian lookalikes, doesn't help your case, IMO.
You cannot get a fully automatic quad 50 cal to mount on the back of your pickup truck in the US. They have those in Mexican cartels.
You cannot get hand grenades in the US, destructive device restriction, however they have those in Mexican cartels.
You cannot get alot of stuff they have in Mexican cartels here, but America is the reason for the Drug Violence?
Nope.
hk
But once, again, the truth has been revealed. The NRA bosses don't care about enforcing existing gun laws and they don't care about helping law enforcement stem the tide of blood flowing from violent drug dealers, gangs, felons, or assault-rifle-wielding snipers." -Paul Helmke
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-helmke/nra-campaigns-to-protect_b_710496.html
Yep. Here's how serious we are about "enforcing the laws on the books" :
"Gun rights advocates are up in arms that a Texas gun dealer was sentenced to six months in prison for selling a firearm to an illegal immigrant, but a "middle-man" who bought the gun for the immigrant -- and who was in the U.S. illegally himself, but had a valid driver's license -- was never arrested, charged or deported in the case."
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/09/09/texas-gun-dealer-gets-prison-sentence-selling-gun-illegal-immigrant-id-illegal/
Obviously, enforcing the laws already on the books is secondary to prosecuting illegal immigrant straw-purchasers because of the fear of being labeled a "Racist!"
That's a big ol' FAIL, Paul.
As far as protecting their own political interests, the current administration, already perched precariously on the ledge of losing congressional majorities in November, are NEVER going to introduce ANY form of gun control until at least the 2nd week of November. This is politics 101. to act bewildered is either naive or disingenuous.
But more importantly, is it possible that they recognize the futility in "solving" Mexico's multi-faceted drug, gang, and corruption problems through regulation of US guns? I mean, sure, Obama as a Senator was no friend to the 2nd Amendment. So naturally, all of your blog posts in 2008 sounded like pep-rallies (remember "We Win, they Lose, Now Let's get To Work?") because of your naive assumption that O was going to start dolling out gun control legislation like snaks-sized snickers on Halloween, forgetting that at the core, he's a politician. But politician or not, he's a smart man and well educated. While YOU may be so one dimensional to believe that the worlds ills can be rectified through banning guns and infringing upon the 2nd A, I'm sure the POTUS can recognize that Mexico's government is the primary source of their own problems. If the "private sale loophole" amounts to less than 3% of all criminal gun sales in the US, what makes you think this is the cure-all for Mexico?
I smell agenda. And it stinks.
One of the continuing factors in the problems south of the border is the corruption of government officials.
Do you suppose our government's refusal to enforce the laws here might also be a form of corruption?
Mexican governments for years have relied on monetary remittances from the US to keep their economy and civilization afloat. Why reform the government to help the people, when people can just go north and send back cash? They have no vested interest at all to help seal the border. And to an extent, some special interests in the US also have reasons to look the other way.
But we have an insatiable appetite for cheap, exploitable labor and for drugs. Those demands, couple with the above-mentioned Mexican government plan to keep the border porous, have brought us to this-- the problem started long before guns were involved.
Now the problem has spun out of control. We can do our part, after all, cross-border gun smuggling is already illegal, as is drug smuggling and distribution, and if a particular gun dealer is revealed to be a supplier then shut him down individually. Enforcing these laws is a better alternative to blanket bans that everyone will have to suffer.
There's only so much we can do on our end so long as the Mexican government refuses to stand up and do it's job as a sovereign state with responsibilities, though..
"When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred."
- - - - - Niccolo Machiavelli
I would not lift so much as a finger to help such a contemptible regime.
I wish to note I don't and never have used illegal drugs.
Like you, I do not, and have not used illicit drugs.
Check appendix A3 page 4 of the following document:
http://www.atg.state.vt.us/assets/files/WhereHaveAlltheDollarsGone2009.pdf
And the D- rated orgainzation hired to raise BC funds wile keeping a tidy 57.8% of the proceeds:
http://www.bbb.org/boston/business-reviews/telemarketing-services/share-group-inc-in-newton-ma-48602/