Alphecca

Maybe We Should Build That Wall...

If you read my Weekly Report last Monday, you know that Canada, Jamaica, et al are blaming the US for their gun crime problems. Now, from the LA Times, Mexico is blaming us as well:

The most popular instruments of robbery, torture, homicide and assassination in this violence-racked border city are imported from the United States.

"Warning," reads the sign greeting motorists on the U.S. side as they approach the Rio Grande that separates the two countries here. "Illegal to carry firearms/ammunition into Mexico. Penalty, prison."

The signs have done little to stop what U.S. and Mexican officials say is a steady and growing commerce of illicit firearms in Mexico — 9-millimeter pistols, shotguns, AK-47s, grenade launchers. An estimated 95% of weapons confiscated from suspected criminals in Mexico were first sold legally in the United States, officials in both countries say.

Guns are the essential tools of a war among underworld crime syndicates that claimed between 1,400 and 2,500 lives in 2005, according to tallies by various newspapers and magazines.

[...]

There are fewer than 2,500 registered gun owners in the entire country. Yet Mexican police confiscate an average of 256 weapons every day from suspects, officials from the attorney general's office said recently.

Javier Ortiz Campos of Mexico's Federal Preventive Police says traces by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on weapons confiscated in Mexico often lead to the gun shops, gun shows and flea markets of Texas. The U.S. state has some of the most liberal gun laws in the country and a porous, 1,240-mile-long border with Mexico.

"Over there they even sell guns at Wal-Mart," Ortiz Campos said. The weapons confiscated in Mexico come mostly from U.S. border cities such as Laredo, El Paso and Brownsville, he said. But many come also from Houston and San Antonio.

Okay, I have an idea. There's talk of building a huge fence or wall along the southern border. Let Mexico share the cost of it. Guns won't flow into Mexico and illegals from Mexico wont flow into the US. Everyone wins!

Oh wait! Vicente Fox doesn't like that idea:

Mexican President Vicente Fox has described a US proposal to build a fence along their 3,200km (2,000 miles) border as "shameful".

He said the proposal - which Mexican officials have compared to the Berlin Wall - was a "very bad signal" from a nation of immigrants.

The US House of Representatives passed an immigration bill last week, backing the building of a 1,130-km fence.

About 10m Mexicans are believed to live in the US, some 4m of them illegally.

More than a million are arrested every year as they try to enter the US to seek work.