Mexican drug cartels: my published editorial

[UltraShy]

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opin...cc4c03286.html

Most Mexican drug guns not from U.S.

Posted: Thursday, September 17, 2009 5:00 am

Dear Editor: The anti-gun crowd says that 90 percent of guns seized and traced from Mexican drug cartels trace back to the U.S. Problem: The Mexican government has recovered hundred of thousands of guns, but has only turned over a small fraction of those guns to the U.S. government for tracing.

Mexican authorities selectively don't turn over guns that are from corrupt Mexican military and police who "lose" guns for money. They also intentionally don't turn over guns that clearly were provided by the Russian mob and other non-U.S. sources that will provide you with endless stockpiles of weapons if you have enough money.

The anti-gun folks want to blame American gun dealers and gun owners so that they can justify even greater gun control in our nation. They hope to mislead you into thinking drug cartels are buying their guns in the U.S., when the vast majority come from other sources that are in no way related to the U.S.

When cocaine sells at a 17,000 percent markup, drug lords have plenty of cash, so you can see how the Mexican military might "lose" guns when doing so can lead to finding huge piles of cash.

Karl J. Schubert


Wauwatosa

[Still Waters]

Congratulations UltraShy-very interesting and razor-sharp,as always!!

[Still Waters]

How much time each day/week do you spend doing this sort of research??

[millenniumman75]

I lost track of how many times you got published.

[UltraShy]

Originally Posted by millenniumman75

I lost track of how many times you got published.

I don't recall how many either. I have my calendar marked though since the Capital Times will allow an editorial from the same person once ever 2 weeks. I'm not sure what my next one will be on.

[IDK]

Although you may think otherwise, the U.S. gun laws are some of the most lax in the 'civilized' world. There are over 6600(!) gun dealers on the border alone. U.S. citizens are allowed to buy multiple assault rifles. Cars are also not checked to a great extent going south, so you could see how easy it would be to buy or steal weapons in the U.S. and move them south with no problem.

I think the 90 percent figure is b.s. but there have been thousands of cartel weapons that have been traced to gun dealers in the U.S. so you cannot completely deny the fact that U.S. guns do end up in Mexico.

I do think though that Mexico is trying to put alot of the blame on us due to their own lack of incompetence. Like you said, there are probably many corrupt military personnel that sell weapons to the cartels, and corruption through out the government is rampant. They are actually fast approaching a failed state status and naturally they are starting to let the excuses fly.

Sometimes I think that its ridiculous that they sell assault rifles in the U.S. because they serve no purpose other than to kill other people efficiently, but I would rather have the rifles then not. Even if the U.S. completely banned all guns, there are still many foreign manufacturers of weapons and the cartels could easily find new guns, and I would rather not be caught with my pants down.

[UltraShy]

Originally Posted by IDK

Although you may think otherwise, the U.S. gun laws are some of the most lax in the 'civilized' world.

I most certainly would not call US gun laws lax. I'd call gun laws in most other industrialized nations vastly too restrictive, often to the point of effectively being gun bans.

Some gun laws are downright silly. For example, if I wanted to buy a .22 pistol for low-cost target practice I'd have to wait 48-hours after purchase to pick it up, since that's the rule for all handguns in Wisconsin. That's supposed to make sure I have time to cool off and not shoot anyone with that .22 in a rage of passion. Of course, during that waiting period I could kill them with my .357 Mag that may blast a bullet right through them at close range, unlike a .22 that's more likely to just cause injury.

Of course, if killing was the objective and one had no gun on hand to do it with, why would I buy a .22 pistol that, as a handgun, requires, a 48-hour wait? I could buy a shotgun and box of buckshot to take home immediately. Unlike that "dangerous" .22 pistol than can put a little hole in somebody, a load of buckshot can do things like literally remove much of a human head. An ER doc I discussed home defense with keeps a shotgun to defend his home, saying that he never gets a chance to work on patients who were shot at close range by a shotgun as they're in the morgue rather than his ER.

You should also note that an assault rifle by definition is a fully automatic weapon (a machine gun). The "assault" rifles discussed by the media are simply semi-automatic rifles that have certain military-style features that apparently scare the gun grabbers. Back when "assault" weapons were banned from 1994-2004 it was largely a cosmetic issue.

AR-15s are evil "black rifles" as the media refers to them. An AR-15 fires .223 Rem ammo, same as many very generic looking bolt-action rifles made largely out of wood instead of black plastic.

If you end up in the ER after getting shot with a .223 bullet the doctors aren't going to know if it came from an evil "black rifle" with a pistol grip or if it blasted out of a rifle made with lots of wood and having no pistol grip. The wound is the same, even if one gun has a bad *** military-look and the other doesn't.

[UltraShy]

I'd further suggest that the issue here isn't really guns.

Allow me to quote my own editorial:

When cocaine sells at a 17,000 percent markup, drug lords have plenty of cash...

If you think you can stop an enterprise that can produce a product for a mere $100 and then sell that same product at retail for $17,000 you need some education in economics.

I've seen no force in the world stronger than the profit motive and being able to turn every $100 into $17,000 is one hell of a gigantic profit motive. Folks complain about oil companies making too much profit, but even their profit margins look like razor thin when compared to what the black market drug trade can generate.

Drugs are here to stay unless you think it's possible to kill the profit motive. If we instituted sane drug laws instead of total prohibition we could get to the root of the problem and stop much of the violence.