ShareThisWASHINGTON - Once again the gun lobby has stepped up to oppose public safety, this time along the Southwest border where thousands upon thousands of Mexicans have died from battlefield weapons bought in the United States by drug cartel representatives and handed to assassins, some as young as 14.
In a move that should have been made much earlier but apparently was delayed for pure political considerations, the White House and the Justice Department have cleared a proposed policy that would require Southwestern gun dealers to report to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives multiple sales of high powered semi-automatic weapons. Simply put, licensed retailers along that long stretch of bloody international border would have to immediately notify ATF when two or more AK47s or similar rifles above .22-caliber and with a detachable magazine were purchased by one person in a five-day period. These weapons are highly prized by the cartels.
It would not stop the sale, just allow authorities to immediately seek out the buyer and try to determine his motives. The policy would last for six months. That sounds reasonable doesn't it, considering that anyone making multiple buys of firearms of this caliber isn't likely to be using them to hunt rabbits or anything else not human? How about outfitting an army of murdering thugs? Does that seem possible? But there is a weakness in the policy. A bulk buyer could go to 20 different stores, purchasing a weapon at each. The policy also would not cover gun shows where even normal transactions need not be reported, a loophole strenuously defended by the gun lobby.
Mexican authorities believe this would be a big step in helping them fight the vicious drug gangs that have killed some 30,000 men, women and children along the border in the last year. The carnage from the firearms supplied from this country is so bad that it has all but destroyed the tourist industry in Northern Mexico and disrupted growth of U.S. companies that have built plants there. In recent months the violence and just the fear of it have spread south, threatening even posh tourist attractions like Acapulco and Cancun.
But "reasonable" is not a word organizations like the National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents gun dealers and manufacturers, recognize. The NRA has not made itself the most powerful, if utterly irresponsible, lobbying force in the history of the Congress by being reasonable. In fact these groups, whose spokesmen are masters of manipulation, disingenuousness and political extortion have become even more unreasonable, if possible, since the U.S. Supreme Court decided last year that the Second Amendment extended the right to bear arms to individuals and not just "militia" as had been the assumption of past courts.
So when the plan to put the new policy into effect leaked last week before it could be published in the Federal Registry, the gunslingers went predictably nuts, accusing the administration of unnecessarily burdening the poor gun dealers, many of whom by the way have become rich peddling arms to the border gangs. The lobby, of course, equated this simple move to disrupt the gun traffic south as the first step toward registering firearms, which in the world of gun obsession is equivalent to crying fire in a crowded theater. The NRA then shamelessly reiterated its support of law and order despite the contradiction between what it professes and what it works against, which in reality is any disruption of its cash flow.
The policy is moving ahead but the pervasive fear of the lobby's influence apparently almost scuttled it. The national press reported that although President Obama had promised Mexican President Filipe Calderon he would help disrupt the firearms traffic early last summer, the policy proposal got delayed by presidential advisers worried about the impact on Democratic election prospects. That turned out to be a futile gesture given the November results.
There is no justification imaginable for bulk sales of these weapons other than deadly mischief. With thousands of gun dealers plying their trade in the direct vicinity of the horrendous killing grounds, the policy will give authorities on both sides of the border a better chance to cut the losses.
(E-mail Dan K. Thomasson, former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service, at thomassondan(at)aol.com.)
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