A few days ago I wrote about the impact our gun culture is having on the drug wars in Mexico and this morning's NYT confirms this in staggering detail. According to the Times, drug cartels in Mexico have been using individuals in the US (Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico) who have no criminal record and who are strapped for cash to buy weapons and smuggle them across the border. The criminal lack of gun control in our country means that anyone can walk into a store and buy as many AK-47s as they want. For example, this is exactly what happened the other day when a 28 year old unemployed man from Houston bought an assault rifle in cash. Since he had no criminal record and the gun dealer only cares about making a profit, he walked out. A few weeks later that same gun was traced as having been the murder weapon in the killing of three Mexican police officers. In another instance, an American woman walked into a store in Houston and tried to buy an AK-47 even though she knew nothing about weapons. After the suspicious gun dealer informed her she could face up to 10 years in prison if she was buying weapons for someone else, she walked out bewildered.
But even if you have a criminal record you can still legally buy as many rifles as you can. The NRA's ability to block Congress' attempts to regulate gun shows means that gun dealers at these shady shows can sell their weapons to anyone under the sun even (and they often do) to convicted killers: no background check is required, and no reporting to the ATF or any other branch of our government is required. It turns out that drug dealers from Mexico have been using some of these shows themselves in buying weapons and then smuggling them across the border and then using them to kill Mexican police officers. According to our statistics, over 90% of guns in Mexico come from our country.
And what does the criminal NRA say about this? Their argument is so childish and dishonest that it would not merit a response were they not so powerful in the halls of power in this country. An NRA spokesman says that since these dealers will get their guns anyway, why tighten the laws?! This is like a murderer saying "oh my victim would have been shot by another criminal, so why blame me for the murder." And that's exactly our crime in Mexico: accessory to murder.
When President Obama is in Mexico this Thursday, the Mexican President should remind him that the US is obligated by international law to halt the flow of gun smuggling from our country into Mexico. Since these weapons are coming from the territory where the US government is the sovereign, we have a moral and more importantly, legal, obligation to seize these weapons. And tight gun control laws are essential in doing this. Gun shows have to be regulated: 1) every purchase of a weapon has to be recorded and reported to the ATF, including the serial number for the weapon; 2) there needs to be a long waiting period for anyone who wants to acquire more than a hunting rifle, 3) mandatory background checks need to be imposed on every gun dealer, including those at gun shows; and 4) most importantly, the Congress has to re-institute the assault weapons ban, which Clinton had put in place and Bush had criminally allowed to lapse (with the Democrats' acquiescence)-this would ban murderous weapons such as AK-47s.
As long as we do not tighten our gun control laws we will continue to be accessories to murder.
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The American Right is really peculiar indeed, even when compared to other conservative/right wing movements around the globe. Every other permutation Rightism would be calling for protectionism and more state authourity in the face of a financial crisis and a potential threat to national security just south of its border.
But these people want free markets and easy access to lethal weaponry? It goes to show, the American Right has almost nothing to with what is considered "conservative" elsewhere. In reality, it is just an idiosyncratic libertarianism.
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