The Second Amendment helping arm the bad guys?

[dutch508]

I love it when they make up facts.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3211097

bushmeister0 (555 posts)       Sat Apr-26-08 01:12 PM
Original message
There's a war on our southern border! Who knew? The Second Amendment helping arm the bad guys? 
 Advertisements [?]Reuters reports:

"Fourteen Mexican drug gang members were killed and eight others were injured in a gun battle near the U.S. border on Saturday that was one of the bloodiest shootouts in Mexico's three-year-long narco-war. Rival factions of the local Arellano Felix drug cartel in Tijuana on the Mexico-California border fought each other with rifles and machine guns in the early hours of the morning, police said. Some 190 people have been killed in Tijuana so far this year. In 2007, there were more than 2,500 drug killings across Mexico and there have been more than 900 this year."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080426/ts_nm/mexico_drugs_...

There's a war going on right over our southern border and for this we can thank good old American entrepreneurs and the Second Amendment.

ABC reports:

"U.S. gun stores and gun shows are the source of more than 90 percent of the weapons being used by Mexico's ruthless drug cartels, according to U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials.

'It's a war going on in Mexico, and these types of firearms are the weapons of war for them,' said Bill Newell, the special agent in charge of the Phoenix field division of the ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which has primary law enforcement jurisdiction for investigating gun trafficking to Mexico.

'It's virtually impossible to buy a firearm in Mexico as a private citizen, so this country is where they come,' said Newell."

Yay, American freedom!

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4695848&page=1

Maybe Eric Thomson, the online gun dealer who sold weapons to the Virginia-Tech and Northern Illinois University shoohers should think about moving to San Diego?

Eric Thomson initially said he was "blown away" by the fact that both the Virginia Tech killer and the guy who blew away five people at Northern Illinois University both got their guns from his online gun store. He said then: "I'm shaking. I can't believe somebody would order from us again and do this," but now, after some deep reflection and soul searching, he's decided to cash-in by getting his face plastered all over the news for offering guns at cost to everyone and anyone who needs a firearm to protect themselves from the crazy people he sells guns to.

What a virtuous circle.

notesdev (262 posts)       Sat Apr-26-08 01:17 PM
Response to Original message
1. Try thanking the War on Drugs
 it would be more accurate. You put that sort of money in peoples' hands, it doesn't matter what is legal and what is not.

If drugs were not illegal then only illegals will run drugs...er...wait...

ThomWV (1000+ posts)      Sat Apr-26-08 01:23 PM
Response to Original message
3. Yep, its our 2nd Amendment causing drug wars in Mexico ... give me a ******* break.
 Edited on Sat Apr-26-08 01:24 PM by ThomWV
Mexico would look like ******* hobbits lived there if it weren't for our right bear arms. God dam us and our foolish Founding Fathers.

Tom has a new avatar.

bushmeister0 (555 posts)       Sat Apr-26-08 02:15 PM
Response to Reply #3
13. Yes, the Founding Fathers who lived in a country without a standing army 
 and sometimes beset by hostile Native Americans (gosh, I wonder why?) on their borders. Back then the idea of the local men folk keeping a musket over the hearth for quick reaction into a well regulated militia made sense.

I'm quite sure Jefferson never envisioned he was giving every nutcase with a grudge license to rampage throughout a college campus, for example, at will until he ran out of ammo. 

I'm pretty sure they'd have changed the free speach thing if they would have seen the shit that goes on now.

High Plains (1000+ posts)      Sat Apr-26-08 04:09 PM
Response to Reply #3
22. No, not causing, but exacerbating. 
 I have no clue what you mean with your hobbit remark, but American guns are flowing into Mexico like crazy. To deny it is foolish.

Yes, I imagine if by some miracle, the US gun supply dried up, the cartels would look elsewhere, but it wouldn't be nearly so easy as just going to a gun show in Brownsville or Tucson.

As for the heavier weaponry, I suspect a lot of that is originally US military hardware, too. There have been a couple of scandals where members of Central American militiaries have been caught peddling to the cartels the weapons we gave them to fight commies.

And no, our 2nd Amendment isn't causing Mexico's drug wars, our policy of drug prohibition is. We are complicit in what is going on there, one way or another, and probably in several ways. 

Yeah...I don't know about any hobbits, but I know that if we don't give then guns then they'll just get guns somewhere else. OK, so, then what the **** are you bitching about?

NickB79 (1000+ posts)      Sat Apr-26-08 02:44 PM
Response to Original message
16. Yeah, I'm sure the Mexican drug cartels are buying machine guns in the US
 "Rival factions of the local Arellano Felix drug cartel in Tijuana on the Mexico-California border fought each other with rifles and machine guns in the early hours of the morning, police said."

If they have machine guns, that means they can get pretty much anything they want from anywhere. There have been reports of RPG's being fired in some battles!

no common sense allowed in the hive.

proud2Blib  (1000+ posts)       Sat Apr-26-08 03:44 PM
Response to Original message
19. Wait a minute, I thought machine guns were too expensive
 for anyone but collectors to own. 
 Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top
 ThomWV  (1000+ posts)      Sat Apr-26-08 04:04 PM
Response to Reply #19
20. Nope, the guns are cheap, its the license to own one legally that is expensive.

and back to stupidity...

proud2Blib  (1000+ posts)       Sat Apr-26-08 04:18 PM
Response to Reply #20
23. That's not at all what I was told here last week
 Edited on Sat Apr-26-08 04:18 PM by proud2Blib
in a thread about the Kansas governor signing a bill making it legal to own a machine gun in Kansas. In fact both here on DU and on the floor of the state legislature, the argument was presented that machine guns cost a minimum of $20,000 so we didn't have to worry about them being used for violent crimes.

Now I see they ARE being used in Mexico for violent crimes. Hmmm.
 Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top
 Pavulon (1000+ posts)       Sat Apr-26-08 04:29 PM
Response to Reply #23
24. Machine Guns are regulated by the Federal
 government. The NFA classifies certain weapons as machine guns. Typically this would cover a select fire rifle, like the M4 up to a Browning m2 traditional looking "machine gun". The m4's rifles natural price is about 700 dollars. However the government does not allow weapons like the M4 manufactured after 1986 to be sold to civilians at all. So if you want an M4 in addition to the federal background check, and $400 tax stamp you must purchase out of a limited pool of weapons.

They may be remanufactured but none are new. So $20,000 is a ballpark for a rifle that is worth $700.

This law works because it is rigorously enforced.

The weapons used in mexico probably come from internal sources who legally purchased them in mexico (police, army) and them sold them.

[tuolumnejim]

DUmp link? 

[Airwolf]

Asshats . The ignorance is stunning there Mexico has its own gun manufacturing capacity let alone getting guns from old Hugo or even Fidel wouldn't be hard for anyone running drugs.

[Chris_]

Maybe we ought to make a law against killing people.

[dutch508]

RedCappedBandit (1000+ posts)       Sun Apr-27-08 11:26 AM
Response to Original message
37. Sad how much worse the world is because of the war on drugs.
 

link added as your google foo is weak, old man.

[jukin]

For the DUmbasses an armed and legal citizen is a bad guy. 

DO the sorry DUchebags thin that the gangs would not arm themselves regardless of the Second Amendment.  Look at DC and Chicago with the most draconian violations of the Constitution.  they have the highest murder rates and most armed thugs committing felonies on an unarmed citizenry.  The FFs are spinning in their graves.

[dandi]

Tom has a new avatar.

Is that supposed to be "his" Bronze Star? If so why is he displaying it so ostentatiously. It strikes me as unseemly at best to use one's own military decoration in such a way, as if to say, "Hey, look what a hero I am!"

If he has a Bronze Star, my hat's off to him for his service. It just seems disrespectful to use it in such a manner. :clueless:

[franksolich]

Tom has a new avatar.

Is that supposed to be "his" Bronze Star? If so why is he displaying it so ostentatiously. It strikes me as unseemly at best to use one's own military decoration in such a way, as if to say, "Hey, look what a hero I am!"

If he has a Bronze Star, my hat's off to him for his service. It just seems disrespectful to use it in such a manner. :clueless:

Of course our hats are off to the mountain man primitive, for his military service, pre-Vietnam.

I think the mountain man primitive's being a little defensive here; he probably lurks here, and notices the accurate-but-painful comments about him, many of them emanating from yours truly.

The mountain man primitive's one of those dinosaurs, a Kennedy-era (i.e., just before the Vietnam era) "activist" and big believer in the Kennedy mythology.

My "assessment" of the mountain man primitive (whom I had before misidentified as another Thom primitive, this one in New York; I now have the two Thom primitives straight) is that he's basic a decent guy, but such a limpid fuddy-duddy, small-worlded and parochial in his perception of things.

He'd be okay if he stayed off of Skins's island and out in the real world; the mountain man primitive has for a long time now talked about writing a book about West Virginia during the Civil War, and I wish he'd get on it, because it'd probably be fascinating.  But he's not going to get it done hanging around other primitives on Skins's island, or tootling around West Virginia in his enormous elephantine diesel-guzzling pick-up truck lugging a Vanderbilt-sized boat on a trailer behind.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Perhaps this will encourage our beloved neighbors to the south to tighten up the damned border security.

[Chris_]

Pavulon (1000+ posts)       Sat Apr-26-08 04:29 PM
Response to Reply #23
24. Machine Guns are regulated by the Federal
 government. The NFA classifies certain weapons as machine guns. Typically this would cover a select fire rifle, like the M4 up to a Browning m2 traditional looking "machine gun". The m4's rifles natural price is about 700 dollars. However the government does not allow weapons like the M4 manufactured after 1986 to be sold to civilians at all. So if you want an M4 in addition to the federal background check, and $400 tax stamp you must purchase out of a limited pool of weapons.

They may be remanufactured but none are new. So $20,000 is a ballpark for a rifle that is worth $700.

This law works because it is rigorously enforced.

 I love it when they try to educate each other.