A few days ago, I commented on a piece from the New Republic where it was argued that Vice President Kamala Harris should frame her failures in addressing illegal immigration as, in fact, a problem with American guns.

It seems some writers from Newsweek got that particular memo as well.

Immigration into the United States is being partly driven by gun violence — which itself is fueled by firearms bought in the U.S. and illegally transported back to Mexico by organized crime networks.

Over 200,000 firearms found in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico between 2015 and 2022 were linked back to the U.S., recent data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) shows.

Migrants from those four countries make up the bulk of border crossings into the U.S. each year.

"So the criminal organizations that are running drugs into the United States are also controlling the movement of migrants and making it impossible for many families to stay in their communities. [They] are getting their guns from U.S. retail markets," John Lindsay-Poland from the organization Stop U.S. Arms to Mexico told Newsweek.

So we start with an argument that isn't really backed up by anything and it goes downhill from there.

Let's understand that Stop U.S. Arms to Mexico is an anti-gun organization that advocates for, among other things, an assault weapon ban here in the US supposedly because it'll impact violence in a completely different country. The fact that they happen to be advocating for one of the very things every other anti-gun organization in the United States is purely coincidence, I'm sure.

The piece goes on to try and make the case that American guns are fueling the problems in other Latin American nations, which is driving many people to flee into the United States.

However, there are profound issues with this argument.

For one thing, it assumes that the only way criminal cartels with near bottomless bank accounts couldn't find some other source for firearms. Yes, they may well get a lot from the United States, but if we somehow cut them off entirely from those guns, they wouldn't suddenly be without a source, They'd shift to another supply. 

While I'm fine with trying to find a way to prevent these dirtballs from getting American guns so long as it doesn't infringe on our rights, I'm also not delusional enough to think this will depower criminal cartels.

After all, it's not like African warlords are getting their guns from people driving across the US border, and yet they don't seem to lack firearms suppliers.

Then we have the fact that illegal immigration isn't exactly a new problem. 

I'm old enough to remember Ronald Reagan talking about how to address illegal immigration in the 1980s. It has ebbed and flowed nonstop for decades, only now we're being told that it's the result of our lack of gun control, even though smuggling guns out of the country is illegal.

What's more, the illegal immigration has largely only been an issue from the south. Canada also has a long, largely unguarded border with the United States--the largest such border in the world. The same guns could well flow north, and Canadian officials report that they find American guns far too often.

Yet why isn't Canada a war zone like Mexico and other Latin American nations? Why aren't Canadians flowing south to escape the rampant violence?

Maybe because they have a functioning government with minimal corruption that doesn't allow rampaging criminal gangs to take over large portions of its territory?

The issues in Latin America aren't because of American guns and the reasons people are coming to the US--where there are a whole lot more guns--to get away from American guns. The idea that they are is ridiculous. Sure, some of those illegal are going to say that, but they want sympathy from the American people. They'll say anything they can to get that sympathy.

But basic logic illustrates just how idiotic the argument is.