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Federal agents say about 90 percent of the 12,000 pistols and rifles the Mexican authorities recovered from drug dealers last year and asked to be traced came from dealers in the United States, most of them in Texas and Arizona.
The Mexican foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa, in talking with reporters recently, accused the United States of violating its international treaty obligations by allowing guns to flow into the hands of organized crime groups in Mexico.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/us/15guns.html?hp
This is the story that pisses me off the most these days. Whenever I think about America being a violent gun-toting country, I always check myself with “well, at least we aren’t as bad as Mexico.” Wrong, we are supplying 90% of the weapons in the current conflict in Mexico! This makes me angry as hell. So I wrote the following to my US senators:
Senator Bennett,
I am writing you because I am very concerned about reports that 90% of weapons used by the drug cartel are from US sources. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/us/15guns.html?hp. Please support immediate legislation to stop the flow of weapons to Mexico that is fueling the violent rampage terrorizing our sister country. I have not researched where you stand on gun control but this is a case where our lax gun control laws are preventing us from clamping down on illegal gun sales. Detractors claim that the drug cartel members are wealthy enough to get their guns elsewhere and that tighter gun regulations would only stop people who really need guns. But why would drug cartel members go elsewhere if they can get them so easily from us? Let’s make not be a partner in this historic level of violence afflicting Mexico. I also agree that we are violating international norms of gun exports as the Mexican foreign minister has recently claimed.
Americans themselves also don’t need guns, they need heath care, education and jobs. We should clamp down on gun sales in general, especially in light of the gun violence that has recently racked our own country. I agree with Bob Herbert’s recent take on this violence, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/opinion/14herbert.html?_r=1: “Murderous gunfire claims many more victims than those who are actually felled by the bullets. But all the expressions of horror at the violence and pity for the dead and those who loved them ring hollow in a society that is neither mature nor civilized enough to do anything about it.”
Sincerely,
John Wright
Boulder, CO
