The media onslaught against the 2A continues ...

[GarandFan]

Emphases mine. I will post something related to this tomorrow ...

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-03...exicoguns_N.htm

 

Mexico: Gun controls undermined by U.S.

By Chris Hawley, USA TODAY

 

MEXICO CITY — There is one gun store in Mexico. Only one. And not just anybody can shop here.

 

The "Directorate for Arms and Munitions Sales," as the store is called, is run by the Mexican army and occupies two rooms in an olive-green, heavily guarded building near the army's headquarters.

 

Prospective customers need a permit from the army that can take months to get. And once they buy a gun, there are reams of rules: how much ammunition they can buy each month; where they can take the gun; who they can sell it to.

 

To some shoppers, the irony is clear: Mexico has some of the toughest gun-control laws in the world, yet the country's drug cartels are armed to the teeth with illegal weapons that are smuggled over the border from the United States.

 

"If the United States had a system like ours, we wouldn't have so many problems here in Mexico," Agustin Villordo, 27, of Puebla said as he shopped for a hunting rifle.

 

On Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano visit Mexico to discuss ways to stop the smuggling of American weapons, which Mexico says account for 90% of confiscated arms here. The meeting is part of an urgent American effort to aid Mexico as it fights a bloody war against drug cartels.

 

More than 6,300 people have died in drug-related violence since 2006, and some crime has spilled into the USA.

 

Mexican President Felipe Calderón says little will change as long as the United States continues to make gun purchases so easy. His government is pressuring the Obama administration to tighten rules on sales, rather than just the cross-border transport of weapons.

 

"It is necessary to reduce the sale of weapons, particularly of high-powered weapons, in the United States," Calderón said Monday.

 

Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., chairman of a group of Democrats and Republicans who support gun rights, said last week that he "will fight any attempts that infringe on our Second Amendment rights." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently that she would like to see the U.S. reinstate the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, which expired in 2004.

 

Mexico's 1917 constitution gave citizens the right to bear arms "except those expressly prohibited by law." But after student protesters looted Mexico City gun stores during uprisings in the 1960s, the Mexican government began to clamp down on gun owners. By 1995, the government had closed the last gun stores and given the military a monopoly on gun sales.

 

All privately owned guns have to be registered with the Mexican military. Owners who want to transport their firearms outside their homes need a permit that must be renewed annually.

 

On Tuesday morning at the gun store, a few shoppers – all men – wandered among wooden cases filled with weapons imported by the army from all over the world. One case was filled with Colt handguns, another with Beretta rifles. Buyers waited in chairs, their papers and permits at the ready, as soldiers fetched their purchases from a storeroom.

 

The heaviest stuff — assault rifles, flash-bang grenades and bulletproof vests — filled the walls in a separate room marked "For police forces only."

 

The officers who run this system acknowledge they face an uphill battle in their efforts to control Mexico's guns.

 

"I would dare say that Mexico has some of the strictest regulations about gun ownership in all the world, and we're right next to a country ... that has some of the easiest ones," said Lt. Col. Raúl Manzano Vélez, director of the military's civilian gun sales. "That creates a huge vacuum between the countries and feeds weapons trafficking."

 

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would send dogs, X-ray machines and more agents to the border to search southbound cars for guns and cash headed to Mexico.

 

"This is a two-way street," President Obama said during CBS' Face the Nation news program Sunday. "We've got to do our part in reducing the flow of cash and guns south."

 

U.S. gun-ownership groups say they doubt that harsher rules would stem Mexico's violence. For them, Mexico is proof that gun control doesn't work.

 

"Mexico has very strict gun laws which clearly have done nothing to prevent criminals and drug cartels from obtaining firearms, and it's left many of the honest residents of Mexico defenseless," said Chris Cox, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association.

 

Hawley is Latin America correspondent for USA TODAY and The Arizona Republic

[SirMatthew]

If I wasn't so tired tonight I'm sure I could transpose this situation to the plight of Illinois. I see a lot of similarities there.

[PPK]

They really shouldn't complain. Their gun control laws are working every bit as good as the ones in the UK, Austrailia, Chicago... The Mexican government is doing a fine job at keeping guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens. That's all you can expect from any gun control measure.