The nation of Mexico isn’t a good place to be. My advice to most people is to stay the hell out of the country. It’s always had issues, of course, but over the last little while, it’s gotten really bad. I generally say it’s damn near a failed state. That’s because, well, it is.
However, what bothers me more often than anything is how everyone wants to make it out like this is the United States’ fault.
Even as Republican members of Congress accuse Joe Biden of failing to secure the nation’s southern border, Mexico is facing a growing problem of securing its northern border. Guns from America are pouring into Mexico, arming violent drug gangs.
Mexico has tried just about everything to stop the flow of firearms from the north – passing strict gun control laws, imposing stiff penalties on traffickers, and pleading with U.S. authorities to stop the trafficking – but nothing has worked. So now it’s doing what any litigious American would do: it’s suing.
Mexico announced Wednesday it’s seeking at least $10 billion in compensation from America’s 11 major gun manufacturers for the havoc the guns have wrought south of the border. It alleges America’s gunmakers know their products are being trafficked to Mexico and are expressly marketing their weapons to Mexican criminal gangs – designing guns to be “easily modified to fire automatically” and be “readily transferable on the criminal market in Mexico.”
The deluge of firearms from the United States to Mexico – on average, more than 500 every day – is contributing to mayhem there. Killings have become a routine part of the Mexican drug trade. In Mexico’s recent midterm election campaign, 30 candidates were gunned down by criminal gangs. In 2019 alone, at least 17,000 homicides in Mexico were linked to trafficked weapons.
Yet Mexico’s lawsuit is likely to face tough going in the United States, where the easy accessibility of guns is also wreaking havoc but where gun ownership is considered a constitutional right and gun purchases are skyrocketing.
See, the problem I have with this claim is that if American guns are the problem, then why isn’t the United States having more of a violence issue?
Now, I get that homicides are skyrocketing and all that, yet far more than 500 guns a day are hitting the market. We’re looking at tens of thousands of new guns on American streets every day.
And yet, our violence rate is a fraction of what Mexico sees, per capita. Our police can go where they wish and arrest whoever they want. Journalists can report on whatever they desire without their car exploding on them. Our government has some degree of control over every scrap of territory the US possesses.
We’re not even close to what Mexico is, so my question is why? If American guns are the problem, then why isn’t the United States in far, far worse shape?
The answer, of course, is that it’s not the guns.
Those weapons cross the border not because it amuses someone to smuggle guns. No, they cross because there’s a demand down there. There’s a demand because the Mexican government dropped the ball and screwed up by the numbers and are now looking for someone else to blame.
If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is.
Mexico is deploying the Lightfoot defense, only they’re blaming the United States as a whole rather than just states like Indiana. There’s really no difference, only it’s dumber with Mexico. After all, it’s legal to travel with guns in the US, making efforts to combat trafficking a bit tougher. It’s illegal to cross national borders like that with guns.
Maybe if Mexico cleaned up their crap, they wouldn’t have the issues regardless of how many guns are in the country. They need to look at their own house to find the issues and stop blaming us for them.
