"Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
The Mexican ambassador to the U.S., Arturo Sarukhan, recently gave a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations in New York, in which he credited lax U.S. gun laws with the growing gang violence in Mexico. It seems the Mexican drug cartels purchase their arms legally from stores in Texas and then smuggle them across the border. The ambassador said,
The founding fathers didn't draft the Second Amendment to allow international organized crime to A: illicitly buy weapons in gun shops and gun shows; B: illicitly cross them over an international border; and C: sell them to individuals of a country where those calibers or types of weapons are prohibited.
It seems to me the ambassador makes an excellent point. I find myself often on Ricochet defending "big business" against a more populist tendency to celebrate small business. But here we have an example where a giant industry, full of very large enterprises, reigns largely unchecked and prospers by fueling demand that in turn threatens a sovereign state and by consequence, our own national security.
So what's a conservative to do? It's all well and good to say that "when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns," but that rings rather hollow in this circumstance it seems to me. I suppose "seal the border" is another easy answer, but for someone charged with governing and protecting a population, it's not really very persuasive.
So what say you Ricochet? How do you protect the second amendment but also prevent this rather perverted exploitation of the concept of gun ownership? Is there not room here for a slightly tighter regulatory regime... in Texas?
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Comments :
May '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
Surely, Mexico needs to control its border. What kind of "tighter" regulatory regime do you propose for Texas?
Aug '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
Why don't the Canadians have this problem? Because they aren't corrupt at their core. They have a culture of reason and self-discipline; an inheritance of English Common Law which is rooted in Judeo-Christian and and Greco-Roman tradition and which recognizes human dignity and self-worth, endowed by our Creator.
The Hispanic Tradition does not. They continually fall back on extreme to malignant narcissistic fantasies. The Latin American Dictator is almost a cultural icon, reappearing again and again. Spain is the model for all of it. Enough said.
I've been to Mexico many times, and individually, the Mexican people are as warm and generous as any you'll ever meet. But the terrible reality is that the world of the Aztecs - and tribes that preceded them - was hellish, based on massive blood sacrifice and cannibalism. A small aristocracy treated their people as cattle to be used up with work and then slaughtered. The Spanish have a sadomasochistic streak mixed in with their Christianity, and an arrogance and hubris which has ruined them for all time.
Every country settled and founded by the Spanish has had to struggle - often in vain - to escape their horrific legacy.
Edited on Nov 16, 2010 at 4:36amMay '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
Exhibit A: Bullfighting (And how many times must we say it, "Don't play with your food!"
May '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
Let's make a deal. They keep their citizens in Mexico, we'll keep our guns in the US.
May '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
Besides which, anybody really think the Mexican drug lords couldn't buy whatever arms they want from wherever they want to buy them. Is this another market we're going to surrender to the Chinese?
May '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
Does anybody really think the drug cartels are arming themselves thru retail excursions in Laredo and El Paso? I suspect they get their arms the same way they get their cocaine -- from the international black market. The Mexican ambassador knows that. He's just pushing the blame a norte, otra vez.
May '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
OK @Nick -- I can't tell how facetious this comment is -- but think about that for a minute. We present them with an ENORMOUS market for illegal drugs and then we arm so that they can produce the drugs and get them to our markets.
Is there a free market solution to this problem? Open markets, open borders? Honestly the forces of capitalism are too great to put the solution on border control. And @River, I don't know how valid your cultural analysis is or not, but it doesn't really get at my question:
I know what the left (and the Mexican government) would propose to solve this problem. What is the solution from the right. Particularly if you accept my premise that border control has been the prevailing and largely ineffective strategy to date.
May '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
What is the solution from the right? How about: the Mexican government ought to wage war on the cartels until they are beaten. This is squarely in the tradition of Mexican history and governance. And it worked for the Columbians.
Aug '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
River, I think you are on to something there but I will add one element: The revolutions that shook Latin America in the early 1800s were more a product of Enlightenment era thinking than was the Revolution of 1776. Several years ago I read The Liberators by Robert Harvey and was struck by how much the liberation ideology was based on liberty, equality and fraternity rather than life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Another aspect I hesitate to mention lest our Catholic brothers and sisters get up in arms is the fact that the Latin American countries are all Catholic in origin rather than Protestant which I think impacts their view of authority.
Anyway, to solve the problem, give all the Mexicans the right to bear arms. That is the free market response.
May '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
@mesquito And does self-interest suggest any role for us apart from travel advisories to clueless tourists? When limbless corpses first swing in a U.S. border town, whose fault will it be?
Aug '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
Alot of automatic weapons and weapons of war appear to be showing up in these shootouts. These weapons are not purchased through gunshops or gun shows in the US because it is illegal for them to be owned or sold in the US.
This is a myth. You can buy automatic weapons in the states, but you'll be dealing with someone who is a criminal . Grenades ? RPG ? MAC10s ? comeon , you can't get them legally in the US.
You want to go Pakistan ,Yemen, sure you can buy automatic weapons in the bazaar, but you can't do it in the states.
You can buy highpowered rifles with semi automatic capabilities, adding a large magazine to create a very powerful deadly force. But you can't drive it back across the border legally because Mexico has laws against it's import.
So, all these guns are being obtained illegally from criminals by criminals and brought into their country illegally.
So all you have to do is ask the criminals to stop doing it or jail them or shoot them if they resist. Isn't that how laws work ?
What is all this jaw-jaw ?
May '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
If a limbless corpse is found swinging in Presidio or Del Rio, I imagine we can blame the persons who hung it there. Or is that simplistic?
And the role for us in this is to support the government of Mexico against lawlessness. Notice how the Navy is often involved with these fights, even far inland? There's a good reason for that. The Mexican Navy is a professional, ethical institution. It is, by Mexican standards, free of corruption. There are pockets in Mexico that resist the rot. But "we" are going to have to resist shrill recriminations when about "human rights" when the play starts to get really rough.
You still haven't suggested how Texans' gun rights might be reasonably regulated to deal with this.
Edited on Nov 16, 2010 at 6:57amMay '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
mesquito: You still haven't suggested how Texans' gun rights might be reasonably regulated to deal with this. · Nov 16 at 6:55am
Edited on Nov 16 at 06:57 am
You may not believe me but I am really asking the question not working some angle into this. And I don't know enough about the current rules to say but it seems to be that there ought to be some way at the point of sale of distinguishing between legitimate purchasers and gun runners: waiting periods, background checks, limits on number of guns purchased during a set period of time.
Jun '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
Trace, you really swallowed the bait on this one. When Mexican officials blame the US for their problems, it's nothing but a cynical ploy. Mexico is run by an oligarchy. The drug war there isn't being fought because powerful people in that oligarchy are profiting from the lawlessness. When a Mexican official starts pointing fingers, it's an obvious effort to misdirect.
If you want a solution, I'll give you one. Treat the border chaos as a matter of US national security. If the Mexicans can't control it, then American law enforcement and the US military are obliged to do so. First, you infiltrate the border region with American agents. We need the necessary intelligence before we strike. Next comes a massive sweep similar to the surge that broke the back of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Order restored. And damn the sensibilities of Mexico's ruling oligarchs. They're nothing but crooks.
Edited on Nov 16, 2010 at 7:08amJul '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
A couple of points:
1) The simplest conservative solution is to seal the border. Once proper border security exists, ie a fence, etc., etc., it will be as easy to interdict shipments going south as it will be to interdict those going north. It's a bonus that it's a neat diplomatic fork on which to skewer the Mexican government. "Sure, we're fine with stopping the illegal flow of weapons to your country. We'll seal the border. Of course, this will greatly slow down the flow of goods and services into Mexico. And it will also mean stopping the flow of illegal immigrants into the US that provide you with the remittance money to prop up your government. Alas. But this is what you want, isn't it?"
2) But, as flownover observes, those weapons aren't being bought at gun shows.
3) My conservative inclination is to reject broad cultural and even historical explanations of current behaviour (this despite my being a historian) in favour of simpler explanations, such as human venality, greed, lust for power, etc. These are culturally conditioned and manifested, of course, but are recognizably the same across cultures.
May '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
flownover: Alot of automatic weapons and weapons of war appear to be showing up in these shootouts. These weapons are not purchased through gunshops or gun shows in the US because it is illegal for them to be owned or sold in the US.
What is all this jaw-jaw ? · Nov 16 at 6:50am
Well the press coverage is suggesting that it is the high-powered rifles that are being used. So perhaps that is MSM conspiracy but that's what they say.
Why the jaw-jaw? Because this strikes me as foreign policy issue that needs to be reckoned with in a more clear-headed way. I think real-politik suggests that laissez faire is not working. And when the violence creeps over the border there will be lots of finger pointing.
But I am slowly being persuaded that perhaps we have been molly-coddling the Mexican government and that this might have something to do with both parties angling for Latino votes.
May '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
In the Long/Berlinski administration I nominate:
~Paules for Sect'y of Defense
Robert Barraud Taylor for Sect'y of State.
mesquite for NSA.
Oct '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
Robert states the conservative case concisely. The heart of dealing with our cross-border challenges is to seal the border. We must move beyond the sham that is the current federal "big fence" to close the frontier with Mexico. No matter the message of a Mexican politician, the US is not the source of illegal weapons in Mexico. The US is the dumping ground for Mexico's economic and criminal problems. Closing the porous boundary with is an immediate and powerful first step to addressing the corruption in Mexico.
Jul '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
Seal the border.
This is America. It's possible.
Oct '10
Re: "Don't Tread on Us" Says Mexican Ambassador
"B: illicitly cross them over an international border;"
The problem isn't that the guns were purchased in Texas. The problem is that the guns were used in Mexico.
Mexico hasn't valued border security in the 160+ years since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo went into effect. But since most of the negative effects were felt on the northern side of the border, they simply didn't care. Now that they are finally suffering the effects of their tacit encouragement of disregarding the border, they want the United States to deny rights to our citizens in order to make up for their own failings.
The answer to the problem is not going to be found in the United State but in the government of Mexico finally taking responsibility for the sovereignty and security of their own citizens. And, unfortunately, that still doesn't seem to be happening.