Do gun laws make Mexico safer?

[Lobotomy Boy]

Last week I heard a story on National Public Radio (or People's Republic Radio, as it were) about Mexican President Vincente Fox threatening to relax enforcement of narcotics trafficing unless the U.S. tightened up its enforcement of guns going into Mexico. The story outlined Mexico's Draconian gun laws, presenting them as if they were a good thing.

I thought, 'Does anyone in their right mind consider Mexico a safe country? Shouldn't this provide empirical evidence that most gun laws only punish law-abiding gun owners while doing nothing to make a country safer?'

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Mexico's gun laws do make the country safer... for the totalitarian regime running the country. Sure, Mexicans now have their first non-PRE president in years, ending nearly a century of one-party rule, but from what I've seen Fox is just the same animal with a different name. Perhaps if the citizens of Mexico were armed (instead of just the criminals and politicians), they could turn the country into a true democracy, rather than just another third-world tin-horn dictatorship masquerading as a democracy.

 

[Gordon Fink]

And the drug banners can’t see how they’re helping the gun banners …

~G. Fink

 

[dolanp]

Hah, that's funny. The guns are going the other way I think, as people are trying to get guns to their criminal organizations in the US. But wait, if guns are banned in Mexico how are they getting them? Impossible!

 

[Mr. X]

Considering that the police in Mexico are a major part of the crime problem, I'm doubting ANY laws make Mexico safer.

 

[Lobotomy Boy]

I watched a show about prohibition on History Channel last night, and anyone who can't see the parallels between prohibition on alcohol and prohibition on other drugs, and what a futile, counterpoductive activity prohibition is, should take a test. I'm guessing they'll be legally classified as "retarded."

My political views range across the entire spectrum from extreme liberal to extreme conservative, but I think those labels are arbitrary and work to serve totalitarian interests on both sides of the political spectrum. I prefer to think about it as liberty versus tyranny. The way I see it, what works well in one situation may not work in another. For example, I would legalize relatively mild drugs like marijuana, and decriminalize more dangerous drugs like cocaine. Treat them as medical problems and not criminal problems, much like we do now with alcoholism. Personally I don't like any drugs, alcohol included, but that is my problem and if I were to enforce such views on society at large, society at large would suffer greatly for my personal biases.

Such views probably seem pretty liberal to some, but some of my other beliefs would seem overly conservative to others. For example, while I agree in theory with the Libertarian party on most issues, I think the party goes to extremes at times and becomes unbalanced. Take its views on immigration, for example. I think the experiences European countries are having right now show how disruptive open borders are to a country's stability. If it were up to me, there would be strict quotas on immigration into the United States. I'd allow a huge number of people from Mexico to immigrate legally because I believe the Mexican culture meshes well with U.S. culture and that people from Mexico have a great deal to offer our country. I'd set lower limits on people from countries where there is more of a culture clash and the immigrants tend to drain U.S. resources instead of contribute to them. And I'd throw the whole politically-correct notion of encouraging immigrants to maintain their original culture to the exclusion of integrating into their adopted culture in the trash. This would include forcing immigrants to learn English, among other things. To me this is just common sense--even European countries that are so far to the left they are practically socialist follow a similiar model--but to others this is such an extremist view that it would get me labeled a Nazi or racist.

To get back on the subject here, if we took an honest look at how other countries conduct business instead of filtering reality through our own personal biases, we could learn a lot. For example, we could learn from Mexico that Draconian gun laws are as counterproductive as Draconian drug laws.

 

[Mr. X]

To get back on the subject here, if we took an honest look at how other countries conduct business instead of filtering reality through our own personal biases, we could learn a lot. For example, we could learn from Mexico that Draconian gun laws are as counterproductive as Draconian drug laws.

As well as the corruption that ensues in a alleged democracy when you allow political hacks to run the system for decades, thanks to an uneducated and uninformed electorate that actually believes the promises of the politicians to send some of the wealth they expropriate to the masses, which leads to those who have wealth not investing it at home where it can be taken from them.

 

[jnojr]

Another reason to wall off the border... "Gee, Vicente, we aren't doing this to keep your poor people from sneaking over to our country! We're doing it to keep our guns out of your country!"

I'll bet most of the guns in Mexico don't come from the US, anyway. It's got to be much cheaper to buy cargo containers full of AK-47s from a bazaar in the Middle East and bribe a Mexican customs inspector to let them in. They can probably get tons of guns from Brazil, too. Cuba is always looking for hard currency as well.

Vicente Fox has some real solid brass cojones to suggest that the US isn't doing enough to keep unwanted stuff from crossing the border to Mexico...

 

[Ivy Mike]

Its almost sabre rattling except Mexico doesn't have a sabre...more like a rusty pocket knife.

Kinda funny...if it wasn't so absurd.

 

[Dave R]

Well, Vicente and I agree on one thing. Our border is too porous. My reply to him would be the same comment I would make to Mr. Bush.

Enforce your border laws. Its YOUR job to prevent contraband from entering your country. Not ours.

 

[enfield]

It's safer for those with the guns. Funny how it works that way everywhere.

 

[WYO]

Well, Vicente and I agree on one thing. Our border is too porous.

I think you're overstating his position. He likes it porous going into America, just not the other way around.

 

[Standing Wolf]

...Mexico's gun laws do make the country safer... for the totalitarian regime running the country.

That's always the point of disarming the commoners: to make things safer for the aristocrats.

 

[c_yeager]

Hah, that's funny. The guns are going the other way I think, as people are trying to get guns to their criminal organizations in the US. But wait, if guns are banned in Mexico how are they getting them? Impossible!

Believe it or not we actually do have a southern traffic in illegal guns. In fact if you look at the weapons that get confiscated in South America a LOT of them are fairly inexpensive U.S. made weapons. Many of them probably started out as legally purchased weapons in the US. The chances of a U.S. citizen getting any kind of charge for having a weapon purchased by themselves used in a crime in Brazil are pretty minimal. its a low-risk way for criminals who have clean U.S. records to make money.

 

[longeyes]

No one has guns in Mejico--except the narcomilitarygovernment.

Safety through oppression.

 

[griz]

It's funny how when gun bans don't work it is always the fault of the supplier, be it the "weak" laws of the next state over or the lack of cooperation from the neighboring country. The law itself is never questioned.

Of course the same could be said for drug laws.

 

[444]

Almost nothing to do with the current thread

Other than the fact that it is along the same line of thinking:

"If you consider that there have been an average of 160,000 troops in
theater during the last 22 months, that gives a firearm death rate of 60
per 100,000.

The firearm death rate in DC is 80.6 per 100,000. That means that you are more
likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capitol, which has some of
the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.

CONCLUSION: We should immediately pull out of Washington, D.C."

Just an E-Mail I got right before I read this thread, sorry if I drifted off the subject, but it seem appropirate. I have no idea if the numbers are accurate, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were.

 

[Pawcatch]

The firearm death rate in DC is 80.6 per 100,000

This has been taken out of context.
In 1991 Washington D.C. had a total homicide rate of 80.6 per 100,000 people,but it's not nearly that high now.
The total homicide rate in 2001 was 40.6 per 100,000 people,
it was 45.8 per 100,000 in 2002.Also,this includes all homicides,not just firearms.
www.safestreetsdc.com/subpages/murdercap.html

 

[moa]

I suspect much of the gun related, and other crime, that years ago would have been committed in D.C, is now committed in neighboring Prince Georges County. PG County is having a bumper crop in homicides this year.

 

[NMshooter]

All sorts of folks own guns down in Mexico.

Most of them illegally.

One reason why it is so hard to find good deals on older quality handguns here in New Mexico.

Many of them have found their way south...

If our tax dollars weren't propping up that regime Mexico would have had another revolution by now.

 

[c_yeager]

The firearm death rate in DC is 80.6 per 100,000

Please remember that the firearm death rate includes defensive and lawenforcement shootings. If you want to count justifiable use of firearms the Iraq analogy falls apart.

 

[longeyes]

If our tax dollars weren't propping up that regime Mexico would have had another revolution by now.

It appears, given our current immigration situation, that we will be hosting that one instead...

 

[Bwana John]

'Does anyone in their right mind consider Mexico a safe country?

I feel safer in many parts of rural Mexico than I do in parts of the urban USA.

No one has guns in Mejico

False, most ranchos I visit have firearms and are proud of them.

I'll bet most of the guns in Mexico don't come from the US, anyway.

Ill take that bet.

Its almost sabre rattling except Mexico doesn't have a sabre...

It's more like the old "pork sword" thats going to win this one.

 

[Lobotomy Boy]

Quote:
'Does anyone in their right mind consider Mexico a safe country?

I feel safer in many parts of rural Mexico than I do in parts of the urban USA.

You're comparing apples to oranges. Do you feel safer in rural Mexico than in rural U.S.? Do you feel safer in urban Mexico than in urban U.S.?

 

[Bwana John]

You're comparing apples to oranges

I agree, and you are painting with a pretty wide brush.
Spend much time in Mexico? What are you basing your opinion on?

 

[Lobotomy Boy]

Some, but not as much as I'd like to. I ride motorcycle, and would like to tour Mexico by motorcycle, but with the exception of Baja I've been warned by experienced Mexican motorcycle travelers against touring mainland Mexico on bike because it is too dangerous these days. And the reason for that is in large part because of corrupt law enforcement officials.