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A New York Times article this morning investigates how Mexican drug cartels get their weapons:
Drug gangs seek out guns in the United States because the gun-control laws are far tougher in Mexico. Mexican civilians must get approval from the military to buy guns and they cannot own large-caliber rifles or high-powered pistols, which are considered military weapons...The gun laws in the United States allow the sale of multiple military-style rifles to American citizens without reporting the sales to the government, and the Mexicans search relatively few cars and trucks going south across their border.In short, when you read an analyst complaining about the destabilization of the Mexican state, recall that two American fetishes have contributed to that phenomena. The first is the War on Drugs: The American fetish with a series of laws that cannot be enforced has created an enormous incentive for illegal activity in Mexico and much of the rest of Latin America. The second is guns: Our love affair with firearms (and complementary hatred of government monitoring of said firearms) means that Mexico in particular is awash with weapons that enable the aforementioned illegal activity. I'm not terribly optimistic that we'll get over either of these issues anytime soon, although the War on Drugs is probably the more manageable of the two problems.--Robert Farley
