The United States is quite a nation. For someone like me, it represents the freest society on the planet, the place that people desperately long to go to escape tyranny. Hell, they come here to escape all sorts of bad things. I have a dear friend who came here from Portugal just to escape the socialist hellhole that country was shaping up as.

Yet for some others, the U.S. is exceptional for quite another reason. For them, this country is to blame for all the ills that befall pretty much anyone else, especially Mexico.

US firearms have flowed into the hands of corrupt security forces and criminal organizations in Mexico for years, yet the United States is still struggling to stem the tide of deadly weaponry moving across its southern border.

Between 2013 and 2018, 70 percent of the 96,036 firearms recovered by Mexican authorities and turned over to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were traced back to the United States, according to official government data. In 2018 alone, half of the 16,343 firearms recovered in Mexico were manufactured in the United States.

This comes as Mexico, a country with the third most gun-related deaths in the world, continues to see historic levels of violence. In 2017, Mexico suffered its most homicidal year in history since such records started being kept in 1997. The number of killings surged again in 2018, and the country is on pace to reach a record high once more by the end of 2019.

Well, isn’t that special.

First, many of those guns were expressly sent there via the Obama administration in Operation Fast and Furious. Let’s not blame the American gun culture for the failures of a Democratic presidency.

Second, let’s talk a bit about the violence itself. After all, it’s our fault, right? We’re the reason these people get guns in the first place, right?

What trade does most of this violence surround? I’m pretty sure it’s not something that involves the auto industry or the cattle industry south of the border. What does it involve again? Oh, yeah, that’s it. Drugs. All of this surrounds the drug trade.

Now, why does that matter? Simple. Drugs are illegal everywhere on the planet and yet there’s a drug industry.

If the Mexican cartels are going to continue providing drugs, they’re going to continue to get guns. If they’re not getting them from the United States–and not all of them are going from the U.S.–they’ll get them from someone else. Someone will be happy to provide them, so let’s not pretend otherwise.

Further, the claim that most of these guns come from the United States is flat out nonsense anyway. Let’s revisit this paragraph:

Between 2013 and 2018, 70 percent of the 96,036 firearms recovered by Mexican authorities and turned over to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were traced back to the United States, according to official government data. In 2018 alone, half of the 16,343 firearms recovered in Mexico were manufactured in the United States.

These are the guns handed to the ATF. This doesn’t mean they’re all the guns recovered. It also fails to note that a lot of guns couldn’t be traced at all. Why would someone do that?

Easy. They want us to feel responsible for Mexico’s inability to police their own damn country. Well, I won’t. I’m sick of being held responsible for other countries’ issues. If Mexico wants to end the violence, then expand gun rights. Allow the private ownership of gun stores and put more guns in the hands of private citizens who can then act in self-defense. Do that and you’ll see a decline in Mexican violence.

Plus, you’re not punishing American gun owners for what’s happening in another country.