Apparently now we’re giving material support to narco-terrorists. I shit you not, go read.
The web of interests concentrated in the National Rifle Association and which spends millions of dollars to lobby against gun control legislation in Congress may be inadvertently aiding in the reign of terror being waged by drug cartels in northern Mexico. Recent reports suggest as much as 90% of the weapons used by the cartels come from north of the border.
Here we go with the Mexico crap again. This number has been bandied about for years now, but when you hear talk of guns in the hands of narco-terrorists, they are things like machine guns, rocket launchers, and other heavy weapons which are not available in the United States to civilians.
The gun lobby has consistently argued against any form of gun control, even against the logic of barring civilians from carrying concealed semi-automatic weapons. During his tenure as governor of Texas, George W. Bush signed legislation that allowed Texans to carry concealed weapons into churches, amusement parks and diners, among other public places.
Actually, churches and amusement parks are both places where carry is prohibited under Texas’ laws. Some diners can be too if they derive more than 51% of their sales from alcohol. But where is the blood on the streets that this was supposed to cause? Forty states later, it’s failed ot materialize.
Now, the NRA is not likely to be engaged in such flagrant acts of illegality, but its attitude of moral indifference to the consequences of small arms proliferation throughout the US market clearly has made more weapons available for criminal entities to take advantage of.
So explain to me how we’re supposed to keep guns out of the hands of drug cartels who are already trafficking in a contraband product? Do you seriously think if we made guns illegal in the United States that drug cartels won’t be able to get guns? They aren’t getting rocket launchers or machine guns from US sources.
The crux of the gun lobby problem is that its efforts have been aggressive and have arguably led to such a proliferation of small arms in US society that there is now a massive surplus, far beyond the real “need†experienced by the population at large
There’s that “need” word again. Who gets to define need? It would seem based on sales of firearms lately that a lot of people seem to think they need one.
Let’s put the 2nd Amendment aside for a moment — reasonable law scholars disagree about whether or not the “right of the people to keep and bear Arms†was intended to be linked only to “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free Stateâ€, or whether it was intended to grant all citizens the right to carry handguns and semi-automatic firearms.
This isn’t an academic debate anymore. The Second Amendment is an individual right, and it extends to being able to keep firearms in the home. Based on dicta in Heller, it probably also extends to some manner of carrying firearms as well. That’s now the law of the land.
In fact, strict gun control would not require a ban on weapons licensed for hunting, sport shooting or personal safety. So, one could argue that, except for the desire to push the proliferation of small arms, for the profit of interests backing the intense lobbying of Congress, there is no serious threat to 2nd Amendment rights from gun control and no sound legal basis for the lobbying effort itself.
Yep, because it’s always lobbying on behalf of some evil moneyed interest with the left. It’s never the fact that millions of Americans disagree with gun control and don’t want to see any more of it. Who do they imagine the NRA’s four million members are then? Or the approximately thirty million Americans who identify with the NRA but aren’t current members? We are the NRA, not the gun industry (who has their own group).
But why bother seeking out an understanding on the issue when you can just build an elaborate fantasy in your head about a vast industrial conspiracy to encourage the proliferation of small arms? It certainly feels a lot better than pondering the fact that millions of Americans simply don’t agree with you.
“Recent reports suggest as much as 90% of the weapons used by the cartels come from north of the border.”
The anti-gun lobby is using ATF “crime gun” trace data incorrectly, again.
All we know from this is that 90% of only the guns that Mexican authorities ask to be traced in the US come from the US.
Guns that the Mexicans already know don’t come from the US (e.g. machine guns; models never available in the US) are not traced by the ATF.
We need an international version of the Tiahrt Amendment to keep this mendacious use of info from being subsidized by tax dollars.
“Actually, churches and amusement parks are both places where carry is prohibited under Texas’ laws. ”
It is only prohibited IF it is explicitly stated as such per section 30.06. Otherwise, these two are legal places to carry as well – stated in PC 46.035 in (i)
(i) Subsections (b)(4)[Hospital], (b)(5)[Amusement park], (b)(6)[Chruch], and (c)[govt meeting] do not apply if the actor was not given effective notice under Section 30.06.
30.06 requires verbal notice or written and is very specific on how the sign is to read and be displayed. I haven’t seen one yet but I haven’t been to any amusement parks yet.
One quibble:
“That’s now the law of the land.”
That’s once again the law of the land.
Recent reports suggest as much as 90% of the anti-gun propaganda used by the left-winger media comes from “nonsense-land.” The other 10% comes from the “Republic of Half-truths”
I think there are two important things to keep in mind in the public arena when it comes to the issue of American guns and Mexican crime.
First, it is pointless to dispute that the bulk of illegal firearms in Mexico probably originated in America (of course the RPGs, grenades and machineguns of the drug cartels do not). What is more important is that despite firearms being all but prohibited, Mexico has about 3 times the murder rate compared to the United States. In fact should the proportions of murder by weapon-type hold up, Mexicans probably have a higher rate of murder by knife alone than the American rate of murder by firearm. Conclusion? It’s the culture not the weapon which is Mexico’s problem, stupid anti-gunners!
The second important thing is that Obama is aware that he doesn’t have the votes to push gun-control through Congress (he has said as much). But there is much that Obama could do to push gun control by executive action which does not require the involvement of Congress or only minimal involvement.
First off is a ban on importation of so-called “assault weapons” (or parts!) based upon the authority of the Gun Control Act of 1968 and it’s absurd “sporting purposes” provisions. In fact anti-gun Congressmen and the usual crowd of anti-gun organizations, such as the Violence Policy Center, have already requested the Obama administration do so.
The more far reaching and more dangerous act of Obama though, might be to join with the international anti-gun movement trying to make a new treaty restricting trade in ‘small arms’. A treaty only requires ratification by the Senate which is a lot easier than moving anti-gun legislation through the House of Representatives.
And those who hope that a treaty banning so-called “assault-weapons” would be struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court as violating the Second Amendment shouldn’t be so sure. D.C. v Heller was a narrow ruling in a clear cut case and even so was a 5 to 4 split decision. I have no confidence the current SCOTUS will protect our self-loading rifles from legal attack.
Personally I have a diiferent take. I want a industrial complex producing small arms to sell to the American public so that all American are well armed with a variety of guns.
I am so disappointed to find that isn”t true. Take that back Sebastian and say it isn not so!
They lie just for practice. Most of the guns used by the Mexican drug cartels come from south of the border, the Mexican border. The majority of arms are smuggled into Mexico from Guatemala and come from there or one of the other Latin American countries. It isn’t like they are hard to find there, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua all have some of the highest concentrations of light military weapons in the world. They are also much easier and cheaper to purchase there than trying to buy anything remotely similar in the United States.
That isn’t the point, though, is it?
It has more to do with stirring up the uninformed public opinion and getting some good headline news.
As I said, they lie just to keep in practice lying.