Mike McClellan is right. We, the U.S. of A., are a major supplier of guns to Mexico. We’ll sell guns to anyone that has the cash to buy them, and the drug cartels have a LOT of cash. It’s cash they earned from selling drugs.
Mostly to Americans, who buy around $40 billion worth a year. That kind of money doesn’t come from homeless druggies living in dumptsters. It comes from people with bachelor’s or master’s degrees and doctorates. It comes from middle an upper class people and their kids.
No drug buyers, no cartel, no cartel, no mass weapons purchases, no mass weapons purchases, no mass killings of innocent victims on either side of our borders. Ain’t free trade grand?
Jerry Ricks
Mesa
DonMey posted at 9:28 am on Sun, Oct 14, 2012.
No one knows where cartels are getting most of their weapons. Why? Because they make them untraceable. How? They do things like file off the serial numbers. Maybe we should pass a law to make that illegal and it will stop? Oh, wait....it already is.
I just don't understand it! How could cartel members possibly be willing to violate gun control laws?!?
chatmandu002 posted at 11:28 am on Sun, Oct 14, 2012.
Jerry,
I'm not selling any guns to the drug cartel, so please don't add me to the "We, the U.S. of A. are selling guns to the Mexico drug cartel". It's criminal that our own government doesn't secure our borders enough to stop this gun running trade. What's even worse are the traitors that this for the money.
My Take posted at 1:13 pm on Sun, Oct 14, 2012.
We have put many patrols on our borders, these cartels have people working from within our borders. Remember money talks.
2nd Mexico has strict gun laws. The only weapon you can get is a .38 caliber. Our loose gun laws and negligent gun sellers are the problem.
TempeTownToilet posted at 1:27 pm on Sun, Oct 14, 2012.
If we legalized drugs and ended the insane "war on drugs", the crime associated with the drug war would end over night, and that includes the smuggling of guns into Mexico.
On the other hand I suspect that the smuggling of guns into Mexico from the USA is mostly hype created by the ATF to create jobs for it's agents.
Why buy 100 AK-47s in the USA which cost $1,000+ each when you can get them in other 3rd world countries for under $100.
As H. L. Mencken said
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
truth posted at 3:01 pm on Sun, Oct 14, 2012.
What makes the drug war so difficult in Mexico is because the cartel and the Mexican government are closely tied. The U.S. is number one in arms sales in the world, guns and war make profit.
Arizona Willie posted at 12:24 pm on Mon, Oct 15, 2012.
truth --- you are correct. The business of the U.S. is WAR WAR WAR.
Ever since WW I we have engaged in one war after another with only a pause of a couple of years between them to build up our supplies of weapons and ammunition again.
We have companies building aircraft, tanks, armored vehicles, weapons and ammunition non-stop.
We have to either sell them to some other country or use them.
samkat posted at 4:52 pm on Mon, Oct 15, 2012.
So what's your point Jerry? The Mexican government has ample opportunity to patrol their side of the border as well as to do vehicle and people searches on their side. Do they take this opportunity? NO! It might interfere with their citizens moving north as well as the drug traffic into the United States.
Tempe: We already spend enough of our tax dollars on people addicted to drugs in the form of medical care and violence created by drug addicts. Are you prepared to spend even more of our tax dollars on the end results of legalized drug use?
Arizona Willie posted at 7:30 am on Tue, Oct 16, 2012.
samkat, in the countries where using marijuana has been " legalized " crime went down.
When drug users have a cheap clean source of legal medication it puts the crime syndicates out of business, at least for those drugs.
In California where " medical marijuana " has proliferated and there are dispensaries all over the place, there has NOT been a crime wave in the vicinity of the dispensaries.
The end result of LEGALIZING drug use is to take profits away from the drug cartels and put them out of business.
Legalizing drug use SAVES taxpayer money.
We have imprisoned hundreds of thousands of people over the years for simply having a marijuana cigarette. Insanity.
The liquor companies have been bribing our legislators with " campaign contributions " to keep marijuana illegal because they know it would cut into their sales.
Some drugs such as heroin etc. probably should be kept illegal but there is also a good argument for legalizing them too.
People can and do destroy their lives with alcohol, what difference does it make which vehicle they use?
Why should society burden itself with the costs of arresting them and trying them and imprisoning them and then feeding and clothing and providing free medical care to them?
Some countries treat drug addiction as what it is, a medical problem of addiction and addicts can get clean safe drugs or go into a free rehab.
Very very little drug based crime or costs to the taxpayers.
Engaged Voter posted at 5:41 pm on Tue, Oct 16, 2012.
"Are you prepared to spend even more of our tax dollars on the end results of legalized drug use?"
Samkat, perhaps you should come out of the basement once in awhile.
Why would the United States of America spend "more of our tax dollars on the end results of legalized drug use' when EVERY OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED NATION that has done so has accomplished it WITHOUT SPENDING MORE MONEY?
Why would ours be so different? Or did you not know the facts?
Arizona Willie posted at 7:40 am on Wed, Oct 17, 2012.
Engaged Voter ... facts are an < inconvenience > to right wingers who make it a policy to ignore them whenever possible.
sockratties posted at 8:33 am on Wed, Oct 17, 2012.
Profits from illegal drug laws bankroll drug cartels. If they lose profits, they can’t afford to buy firearms. The reason they need firearms is to protect drug routes and protect movement of drugs. Drugs, money and firearms are all part of the same business. Drugs are the cause, guns are a result and money ties them together.
We have proven that intervention does not work. Prohibition was a good example of failed intervention policies. Any success in interrupting the supply raises the price on drugs. The higher the price the more criminal activity required by users to procure their supply. Drug cartel profits increase as intervention efforts increase.
Organized crime in the U.S. got started because prohibition made alcohol worth millions to the crime families. Cartels in Mexico are today’s organized crime being bankrolled by the “war on drugs.” Money that gets spent on government corruption, prostitution rings and on criminal infestation of legitimate businesses. That’s occurring on both sides of the border, at all levels.
Take away as much of the profits as possible to reduce cartel profits. Legalize and tax marijuana, control and prescribe cocaine, heroin and substitute drugs (such as methadone) as part of rehab programs, prosecute suppliers as serious felons and change drug use to misdemeanor status. Hit neighborhood meth labs hard including the do-it-yourselfers.
JNelson posted at 9:25 am on Fri, Oct 19, 2012.
Truth, ArizonaWillie......the US IS the biggest arms dealer in the world. That doesn't mean the government is selling arms at a profit. Far from it. The only profit being made is going into the coffers of the manufacturers of those arms, and small arms (rifles, pistols) are only a minuscule portion of the total dollar picture. Think of how many assault-STYLE weapons it would take to equal the cost of one modern jet fighter or tank. Tens of millions of them! So, I think assuming that Mexico or any other country is being flooded by small arms sales by the US government, with the US making a profit doing so, is badly mistaken.
As others have pointed out, the vast bulk of small arms getting into the hands of cartel members come from bulk purchases elsewhere around the world. Even though the cartel bosses have lots of money, they see the folly of spending 10 times as much for a single semi-automatic AK-47 in a US gun shop when they can buy plane and ship loads of them elsewhere at a low price. Whatever the volume of illegal small arms traffic across our southern border, eliminating it completely won't make a significant dent in the numbers of firearms the cartel can and does acquire with which to arm its members. That doesn't mean we shouldn't attempt to curtail such illegal sales and transfers but we shouldn't use them to cloud the big picture, either, especially in an effort to curtail the 2nd Amendment rights of American citizens.
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