Task force seeks new ban on assault weapons

[Howzit]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/12/AR2009111211331_pf.html

A binational task force on U.S.-Mexico border issues will call Friday on the Obama administration and Congress to reinstate an expired ban on assault weapons and for Mexico to overhaul its frontier police and customs agencies to mirror the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The recommendations are among a broad set of security, trade, development and environmental proposals that come as President Obama and his Mexicans counterpart, Felipe Calderón, move to deepen engagement on issues including economic recovery, climate change, illegal immigration and narcotics trafficking.

Robert C. Bonner, the U.S. co-chairman of the private task force, which included several former senior government officials from both countries, said the changes could be included in a follow-up to the Merida initiative, a $1.4 billion three-year commitment of U.S. aid to support Mexico's crackdown on drug cartels that ends next year. The proposals "will transform management of the border from a source of contention and frustration into a model of cooperation," states a report by the Los Angeles-based Pacific Council on International Policy and the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations titled, "Rethinking the U.S.-Mexico Border." The 30-member task force blamed lack of collaboration for violence, billions of dollars in lost economic opportunities and a public perception of a "broken" system.

In Mexico City in April, Obama pledged to push the Senate to ratify an inter-American arms-trafficking treaty but backed away from a campaign promise to reinstate a ban on assault weapons that Congress let expire in 2004. Obama said that it would be too difficult politically to enact new gun legislation soon and that enforcing existing measures would have a more immediate effect.

Mexican officials want a ban, saying that 90 percent of guns seized in drug crimes in Mexico and submitted for tracing to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives originate in the United States, including most assault rifles.


Brace yourselves...

[AtheistCrusader]

1. 90% of the guns they bothered to trace.

Nevermind the ones from various other countries that don't even have serial numbers.


Also, I'm not worried, Obama isn't stupid, he's not going to go for some dumb shit like that. We have work to do, and elections to win, and that, is a total loser of a waste of valuable political capital. Not gonna fly. Relax. He's got this shit. I don't care what the Change.Gov site used to say.

[krispos42]

3. Exactly

It's easy to get any percentage you want if you can be selective in what you analyse.

[benEzra]

9. And most of the long guns that come from the USA

are police/government issue only, primarily weapons that were SOLD TO THE MEXICAN MILITARY and then diverted to the cartels by the Zetas and their collaborators.

[cliffordu]

2. Really. Here comes and avalanche of bullshit......

[eqfan592]

4. Wow, some "taskforce."

"Remember that do-nothing legislation from a few years back? Yeah, that's what we think is the best solution to this problem." The entire "taskforce" should be disbanded, and each of them should know that they should never expect to advise the government about anything again.

[diveguy]

5. Hmmm

Why would a criminal come north to buy a 20,000 dollar AK when they can go south and get them for 20 dollar's.

[taurus145]

6. Exactly!

Besides that, the closest thing we have to an actual "assault weapons" ban is the gon owners act that Reagan signed in the 80's. It bans new machine guns.

What the media and many on capitol hill are calling assault weapons are nothing more than semi-auto rifles.

[one-eyed fat man]

12. there is no accounting for taste

an engraved and gold-plated AK??? Now if that ain't like sticking a diamond in a goat's ass, what is?? By the way, note the pins, that gun started out life as a real deal AKM, full-auto from the factory



How about that checkering with real diamonds and a Cholo self-portrait??

[Euromutt]

7. Jesus H. Christ, this chickenshit AGAIN?

Complete with the fucking "90%" canard, as if that hadn't been thoroughly demolished earlier this year. The hardware capable of automatic fire isn't coming in from American FFLs, but from other places in Central America, and from Mexican government sources themselves. Fortunately, a ban on scary-looking semi-autos continues to be political suicide, and the Mexicans can like it or lump it.

I notice the self-appointed "task force" failed to make one particular recommendation that would make a dent, namely legalizing the cultivation, sale and possession of marijuana. Something like 60% of the Mexican drug cartels' income comes from sales of marijuana in the U.S., so redirecting that money to legal American growers and retailers would make a serious dent in their coffers.

[GreenStormCloud]

8. And it would greatly help out our own economy.

Less recources wasted chasing pot growers. Lots of people who won't be jailed and can be free to live otherwise productive (Or wasted) lives, but we don't have to pay for the jails. Cuts deeply into street gang profits. Pot grown in U.S. becomes (already is, really) a major cash crop.

Lots of reasons to quit the war on drugs. BTW - I have never personally used it.

[Katya Mullethov]

11. They left out recommending legalization -HERE-

Because it would completely wipe out all the gains from market consolidation the MexicanDOTgov has been making in the last three years .

[benEzra]

10. This is the new stimulus package for U.S. gun manufacturers...

promise (again) to outlaw the most popular civilian rifles in America, to get more people to buy them. Hey, it worked 1994-2004, and in 2008; it could work again!

FWIW, for those who wonder what the idiotic 1994 Feinstein law actually did:



Yes, that's a ban-era magazine, too ($9.99 in 2003). And no, that's not a real AK-47; like all U.S. Title 1 AK's, it is non-automatic and works just like any other civilian self-loader.

[spin]

13. We've been through this again and again...

I have to agree with this paragraph,

In Mexico City in April, Obama pledged to push the Senate to ratify an inter-American arms-trafficking treaty but backed away from a campaign promise to reinstate a ban on assault weapons that Congress let expire in 2004. Obama said that it would be too difficult politically to enact new gun legislation soon and that enforcing existing measures would have a more immediate effect.

I have to disagree with this paragraph,

Mexican officials want a ban, saying that 90 percent of guns seized in drug crimes in Mexico and submitted for tracing to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives originate in the United States, including most assault rifles.

Mrs. Clinton is only partially correct. It isn't "our" insatiable demand but the demand of a small subset of the population that fuels the drug trade, but it fuels it to the tune of $15 billion to $25 billion a year. And while Mexican drug gangs do smuggle weapons from U.S. gun stores along the border to elude Mexico's strict gun laws, the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine notes that since the beginning of Mexican President Felipe Calderon's decision two years ago to unleash the military against the drug gangs, the gangs' arsenals have come to include: "sea-going submersibles, helicopters and modern transport aviation, automatic weapons, RPG's, anti-tank 66 mm rockets, mines and booby traps, heavy machine guns, 50-caliber sniper rifles, massive use of military hand grenades, and the most modern models of 40 mm grenade machine guns."

Clearly, these weapons are not coming from a few rogue gun shops in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. With the vast profits that prohibition makes possible, the Mexican drug gangs are tapping into the international black market in military weaponry. Inspecting a few more vehicles crossing from the U.S. into Mexico won't stop that.
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/mexico-11599-drug-border.html

Nor will an assault weapons ban.

[SteveM]

14. As predicted...

Some time ago, I predicted that the gun-controllers, facing unmovable domestic opposition for their bans, would use the international sphere and try to enact bans under the guise of treaties and international agreements.

No surprise whatsoever.