Some thoughts on the assault weapons bans and the “Mexican” issue.


Recently there has been much discussion about imposing new gun bans on the American public and the excuse being used most recently is to help solve the drug war problem in Mexico.  All of the anti gun politicians and special interest groups are piling onto the bandwagon.  They have advocated for these kinds of bans in the past using any and every excuse imaginable to strip away the second amendment to the United States’ Constitution.  Perhaps many people forget that the second amendment is of equal and parallel importance to the first amendment, the right to freedom of speech.

This current excuse for an assault weapons ban is just wrong on so many levels I almost don’t even know where to begin.  It is truly the most absurd argument yet.
Firstly, think of the basic concept being proposed here.  We are going to punish law abiding Americans by taking away from them one of their constitutional rights, at the request of a corrupt foreign government, in order to “solve” what is largely a self inflicted internal political problem which they continue to fail to take any responsibility for.  
This is nuts!  Americans are being asked to give up their constitutional rights at the request of a foreign government that is in denial of it’s own corruption, and failed policies.  This is especially troubling when this particular foreign government has never been willing to help police our shared border in order to help Americans prevent illegal immigration fro their country to ours, a problem that has contributed immensely to this current situation.  I’m not sure which is worse.  For them to have the cohunes to ask us to give up a constitutional right in order to help bail them out of this mess, or the fact that some of our politicians are actually eagerly in favor of granting them this absurd request.  This is just plainly offensive to me as an American citizen.

Many backers of this crazy policy incorrectly say that the tough Mexican anti gun laws are driving the drug cartels towards getting their guns from primarily American civilian sources.  They think that having a similar ban here would be both a good idea for Americans and would also help end the Mexican violence.  This argument is a smoke screen and represents the purely emotional driven “logic” used by long time anti-gun legislators and activists here in this country.  They are simply jumping on the opportunity.
Firstly, instead of emotions, let me bore you with some facts.  Most of these guns are more than likely not coming from the United States civilians gun markets.  Mexico has repeatedly refused to cooperate with the FBI on providing positive identification of the firearms they are finding in their drug war.  Though some of the guns are coming from US civilian sources, most seem to be coming from the Mexican government through corrupt officials and through outright theft from Mexican armories.  Many other weapons are coming from international military black market sales.  Both of these other sources of weapons would be completely un-effected by any civilian ban in this country.  In fact, many of the weapons being discovered are already banned for civilian use here in America.  The Mexican government and the anti-gun folks don’t seem to want to admit these facts so they just ask us to ignore them and amend our constitution instead.  As for Mexico’s tough ant-gun laws being such a good example for us to follow her in America….
Hello!  If Mexican gun laws are so effective why are there so many guns being used in this violence in Mexico?  The truth is two-fold; gun bans are ineffective to begin with, and simply give politicians an excuse to mask over other underlying social/ political causes that they refuse to deal with, and secondly, these guns are not sold in Mexico because Mexico does not make many of these guns to begin with.  They import them.  They import them from a lot of countries, not just the United States.  These tough gun laws in Mexico have done nothing to stop the criminals from waging this violence on the Mexican people.  Simply making it “more illegal” or should I say “double-dog illegal” while at the same time revoking a constitutional right belonging to the American people, will hardly do a thing at all to dissuade these criminals from carrying out their brutal crimes.  They will simply continue to buy them illegally from all sources, as they have been doing all along.  The only ones who will suffer from this are the law abiding American citizens who just had their constitutional right revoked in order to forward a policy that does not address the real problems and will end up not being effective at all!  That’s great.

Americans have a drug problem!  That is the true American contribution to this issue.  For that, we are guilty and we should make every effort to address this issue for our own good as well as the good of the Mexican people.  American guns are just the sideshow and the easy scapegoat for lazy-minded citizens and politicians on both sides of the border to point at so that they do not have to address the real, and harder problems.

How can we fix this situation?  Let’s start by using the tools that we already have.  First of all, try using some common sense. Second, Americans need to stop using drugs.  That would solve this problem almost immediately.  Since this is not likely to just happen all by itself, the more realistic approach would be to truly crack down on the engines of the drug problem by utilizing the already adequate set of laws, including the preservation of our precious constitutional rights.  
We all need to uniformly take drug crimes seriously at not only the law enforcement level but at the political and societal level as well.  I’ve heard so many politicians use the excuses about how drug use is either not a real big problem or that we can’t hold drug offenders responsible because of some social reason they happen to be attached too.  This is horseshit.  More ant-drug education, more parental responsibility, more drug addiction resources, all help but lets stop handing out needles and committing enabling behavior that only ignore the issue.  Continuing to make political and social excuses for those who use drugs is not doing those people any favors - so why do we keep on doing it?  Probably just another purely emotional response I guess.  Let’s stop letting our media glorify drug use all the time.  Our rock stars, our celebrities all get treated like special and privileged people even after they self-destruct on narcotics.  If we only concentrated on how they ruined their own lives and the tragedy of their actions, we might get somewhere.

We must also come up with a reasonable, realistic and consistent immigration policy.  We are a nation of immigrants but illegal immigration has been the single largest contributor to this terrible situation aside from the American drug habit itself. Illegal immigration and the recourses afforded to it have been the source of most of the smuggling of drugs coming into this country, It is also largely responsible for the portion of the illegal arms that actually do come from civilian sources being exported from this country to support the engines of the drug trade in Mexico.  Illegal immigration and it’s support resources are also the assets that facilitate much of the drug related violent crime and human trafficking abuses in the United States southwest.  
Americans, listen up.  Every time a politician tries to justify the case for allowing anyone and everyone into this country, any way they can get in, they are doing far more to perpetuate the violence of the drug trade than any weapons ban could ever hope to un-do.  Every “Sanctuary city,” every attempt to justify the breaking of the laws regarding immigration no matter how well intended, every time we look the other way we and ignore the immigration laws we make the problem worse.  So why do we want to continue to entertain the idea that we give away our own precious constitutional rights in order to protect people who continue to disrespect our laws, and disrespect the rights of those who do not break the law?  Isn’t it ironic that those who want to ban our constitutional second amendment rights also regularly are the very same ones who have consistently failed to take any responsibility for the problems associated with illegal immigration? Most even refuse to acknowledge that it is a bad thing at all.   Their support for illegal immigration has done more to allow this tragedy of drug violence to take place than any amount of firearm sales, legal or otherwise could ever have done.  It is sadly amusing that the very same politicians calling for the revocation of our rights in this case are all too often the same ones who are continuously reluctant to demand the enforcement of the laws we already have, which would go a long way towards effectively and fairly dealing with all aspects of this great and overwhelming tragedy.
Luckily, we have seen recently through extensive polling that most regular Americans “get it” when it comes to illegal immigration.  The politicians and political activists are the ones who don’t seem to be able to figure it out.  I thought we voted for “change?”  I guess we got suckered again.

The last major point I want to make is perhaps at the center of this whole thing.  There are so many myths surrounding the guns at issue and how they relates to the proposed ban that is currently being talked about.  The media seems to be completely ignorant about the facts and exactly what types of weapons these really are.  This ignorance has lead to the rampant perpetuation of almost complete misinformation regarding these firearms.  This seems to be due to the media’s preference for an appetite of sensationalism and emotional, hart-breaking stories at the expense of objective, factual reporting.  
Let’s have some facts for a change.
Most of these weapons are “semi automatic,” which simply means that they fire only once every time you pull the trigger.  They are not machine guns, they are not fully automatic and are not generally military use only guns although some militaries do use them primarily for secondary roles.  They are instead, simply a representation of modern advancements and ergonomic improvements made by the firearms industry since the days of world war One.  Though some “assault weapons” do mimic some military guns, the actual operation of these weapons is significantly different from their military counterparts, and they have in fact been retro-engineered back towards civilian purposes.  That is about it.  Any attempt to make you believe otherwise is really just an attempt to inject politics into the mix.  Any attempt to represent these firearms as purely military guns or machineguns, are simply misleading, or deceitful.
The wholesale ban of these weapons would essentially strip away the second amendment of the constitution by only allowing Americans to legally own “antique” and increasingly out-dated firearms.  This was never the intent of the founders who clearly maintained that the right to own, carry and use firearms was not only for self-defense, sporting and food supply but also to prevent the government from becoming too dominant over its people.  A government afraid of it’s people respects its people.  This premise was upheld in the recent Heller case heard by the US Supreme Court in 2008, and has been upheld thought the history of that court.

We all need to vote for change.  Our country has become bogged down in a mix of political theatre, and a society that seems to wants to just ”blame the other guy” for the problems that it has.  Lets get back to the way it used to be and take some personal responsibility for our own mistakes and let’s begin to get educated about all of the facts before we jump into the abyss again.  Let’s all take control of our lives and dig our selves out of this whole mess.  Let’s not get talked into the idea that government will solve our problems and make our decisions for us because that world will really suck.  Just ask the Germans, the Russians, the Eastern Europeans, the Cambodians….  They all thought at one time that government would save them from their problems and they all paid a terrible price for that mistake.  Let’s learn from their unfortunate lesson.  Remember that our country was created on the basic ideas of freedom and not on the concept of Governmental control.  Why is it we seem to want to hand the government more of it every day?  If a person wants to own a firearm, and they have not been using it to un-duly hurt others, let them have that freedom.  If you don’t chose to exercise that particular right for you’re self, that is perfectly fine but don’t encourage government to tell others that they can not.  That is an attribute of fascism.   Next time, lets make sure to think all of these issues through using common sense so we know what that “change” will really look like before we cast another vote of disparity!  I will vote for anyone who steps up and does this, regardless of party affiliation.

Cliff notes????

Now that there is a very large wall of bolded text. It hurts my brain.

But seriously, the OP has a lot of great points.

Hard to read, in bold.

Now that the aspirin's kicked in from reading megafont rant...

America expecting reasoned and sound effort from MX to clean up their side of the problem is not steeped in reality. They are not long off a revolution, and we'll have a Northern view of what anarchy truly looks like in effect. There's a huge cultural difference between their Northern and Southern states, and the overriding influence of 'la mordida' - literally, 'the bite' or what we call corruption by bribery and extortion - prevents any comprehensive efforts on a national basis.

I just want the wall built and moat dug, complete with laser-guided sharks.

Close the F'ing boarder.

Keep the friggin mexicans out!

The Mexicn Wall is the only way to go. FUCK MEXICO  

OK this is a rant and i did make the font too damned big but the only way I can get my head around this whole mess it to write it down and organized it somewhat.

I like the response regardingt he cultural differences from north to south in Mexico.  I was aware of them but never realy considered that this may not be a drug war as much as a civil war.  Drugs may just be the excuse.  This only re-enforces my points that we as Americans should not be paying with our rights for another countries screw ups.  We make enogh of our own.