The United States gets blamed for Mexican violence all the time. We might as well get used to it. After all, Mexico won’t accept credit for their inability to stamp out the cartels when they were much smaller. They won’t accept responsibility for the widespread corruption that enabled the rise of those cartels. They won’t accept responsibility for anything.
But we’re supposed to accept responsibility for all of it.
In fact, China seems to be getting in on the act, unsurprisingly. From their state-run media:
The US shares responsibility for gun violence in Mexico, which is why the Mexican government filed a lawsuit against 11 US arms manufacturers and dealers, Mexican Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Wednesday.
“The US, particularly its arms manufacturing companies, is jointly responsible for the violence and the difficulties we are experiencing in our country. That is why [we filed]this strategic litigation,” Ebrard said in a video message to a seminar held by the Law School of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, titled “Strategic Litigation vs Arms Producers and Distributors.”
“We see this strategic litigation as a substantive defense in terms of the narrative and explanation of this criminal and violent phenomenon,” Ebrard said.
According to a National Survey of Victimization and Perception of Public Security in Mexico, more than 3.9 million crimes were committed with US-made weapons in 2019.
In addition, seven out of every 10 weapons trafficked in the country come from the US, due to a series of “negligent and intentional” practices by US companies that manufacture and distribute weapons, Mexico maintains.
Of course, all those numbers are suspect. First, the total number of crimes committed with US guns only tells us where those particular guns originated. There’s no framing for the total number of crimes committed during that timeframe and how many guns came from other countries.
Second, the “seven out of 10” claim is extremely suspect, in part because that only counts the guns that can be traced. A lot of them can’t or other countries are more interested in saving face than trying to help Mexico. That’s not how the US does things, though, so we’re forthright about the numbers.
But if China wants to play the blame game, we can go there.
As of this writing, there have been 4.55 million deads from COVID. In addition, hundreds of millions more have been impacted by the disease, some with long-term ramifications we’re only now still learning about. That says nothing about the trillions of dollars of impact the pandemic had on the world’s economy and the lives destroyed that way.
All of that, every single bit of it, can be laid at China’s feet.
Even if you discount the evidence suggesting COVID-19 came from a Chinese lab, they still botched every potential effort to contain the virus. They’ve exerted every bit of pressure they could to distances themselves from the virus rather than trying to work with others to combat it. At every turn, they did everything wrong if they wanted to keep the virus contained.
All of that is on them.
Even if every gun in Mexico came from the United States, it did so against the wishes and laws of the United States of America. The US is doing everything it can to prevent the illicit trafficking of arms into Mexico. Well, now they are, anyway.
On the other hand, China willfully tried to cover up the issue with COVID. They were more interested in saving face than in dealing with the issue and 4.55 million people have died from it, including a couple of friends of mine. They not only didn’t try to stop COVID from leaving China, they actively opposed any measure meant to prevent its spread taken by other countries.
Frankly, China has no business trying to place blame for anything anywhere, much less referring to Mexican violence and the United States. They still have 4.55 million lives and trillions in economic pain to make up for first, which I don’t expect they ever will.
