FARAGO: Fewer firearms, more crime
Gun control set off explosion of drug-cartel violence By Robert Farago The Washington Times 4:15 p.m., Friday, October 1, 2010Last month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told an interviewer that Mexican drug lords are "what we would consider an insurgency." Diplomatically enough, the State Department immediately rescinded her remark. But Mrs. Clinton is right. To wit: So far this year, the cartels' henchmen have assassinated 10 Mexican mayors.
Clearly, the drug lords are subverting the rule of law, obliterating northern Mexico's political infrastructure. And why not? The cartels have bought off the Mexican military, surviving politicians, judges and the police. As we learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, it takes a village to stop an insurgency. Too bad the Mexican people can't own guns.
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Long before the Mexican drug cartels cut a distribution deal with their South American confederates, back when Colombian drug lords were busy corrupting their society's democratic system, Mexico's federal government was cracking down on private gun ownership. Its war against civilian firearms began in 1968, after civil unrest spooked the powers that be. The Mexican government closed all privately held firearm stores. From that point on, all firearm sales had to go through the Mexican Defense Ministry. It determined what guns were sold to whom at what price.
As you'd expect, this artificial concentration of supply led to a worsening of endemic corruption. Bottom line: Only the wealthiest Mexicans could legally secure a firearm for personal protection. Sometimes not even they could. The Defense Ministry's sales practices also reflected its self-serving political agenda. It restricted legal access to guns to the point where some Mexican law enforcement agencies were forced to smuggle in weapons from the United States. So were thousands of civilians.
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Eradicating the scourge of Mexican drug cartels is not simply a matter of handing Mexican citizens a hundred thousand ArmaLites and a few thousand rounds of ammo each. Even if it were, the Obama administration wouldn't go there. But it is true that America has a long, noble history of helping the defenseless defend themselves. If we could pressure the Mexican Defense Ministry to liberalize its firearm licensing policies, even temporarily, we might be able to tip the balance of power away from the cartels and their unconscionable cruelty, toward democracy and the rule of law.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/1/fewer-firearms-more-crime/ 
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