Thread: 54,000 Mexicans sign petition for US gun control

They should disarm their own drug cartels and then they can talk. They would be better off if the citizens had the ability to protect themselves. JMO

54,000 Mexicans sign petition for US gun control

Posted: Jan 14, 2013 3:38 PM CSTUpdated: Jan 14, 2013 3:38 PM CST

MEXICO CITY (AP) — More than 54,000 Mexicans have signed a petition calling on the United States to take further steps to combat weapons trafficking.

Mexico says the majority of guns used by the country's violent drug cartels are smuggled over the border from the United States.

Mexico's best-known anti-violence activist and a prominent intellectual presented the petition at the U.S. embassy Monday.

Activist Javier Sicilia said "The United States is partly responsible for our humanitarian tragedy."

About 70,000 people have died in Mexico in drug violence since 2006, according to the written copy of a speech presented by Mexico's interior secretary in December.

Before the activists presented their petition, President Barack Obama said Monday he would present a new U.S. gun control plan within days.Read more: 54,000 Mexicans sign petition for US gun control - New York News | NYC Breaking News

This petition from what I can tell is NOT targeted at controlling guns within the USA, but to petition the US Gov to stop gun trafficking weapons into Mexico. F&F deja vu.

It is directed more at their own corrupt government, which is heavily impregnated with drug mafia.

What Mexicans in Mexico want is to be able to defend their families from both corrupt Mexican officials and drug gangs.

Essentially, they want the same thing we do!

An article posted here yesterday revealed how Mexican citizens (who are NOT allowed to bear arms) are taking over towns from the corrupt Mexican law enforcement and defending themselves against corruption and drug gangs.

Perhaps they should work on their own border security?...just saying.
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January 15, 2013
Latin America Herald Tribune



In a letter, Mexican activists expressed their bewilderment and indignation at “the indifference of the U.S. government toward the massacres that plunge Mexico into mourning”

MEXICO CITY – Mexican activists Javier Sicilia and Sergio Aguayo on Monday delivered to the U.S. Embassy in this capital a letter signed by more than 50,000 people in which they ask Washington for concrete measures to halt the “illegal and immoral” flow of weapons to Mexico.

In the letter, addressed to President Barack Obama, they expressed their condolences for “the frequent murders of innocents in your country” and said they are “deeply” moved by the recent massacre of children at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.

However, they also expressed their bewilderment and indignation at “the indifference of the U.S. government toward the massacres that plunge Mexico into mourning,” where more than 70,000 people died in conflicts involving rival criminal outfits and the security forces during the six-year term of President Felipe Calderon, which ended on Nov. 30.

Just in December, the first month of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s term, “755 people were executed,” most of them with firearms obtained in the United States, from where 70 percent of the arms seized in Mexico in the last three years come, according to U.S. government figures.

The concrete measures the activists and their supporters are asking Washington undertake include banning the importation of assault rifles manufactured abroad, among them the AK-47, the weapon of choice for Mexican gangsters.

At a press conference, Obama on Monday said that he will study possible executive action to try and put a damper on violence using firearms, basing it on the recommendations presented to him by Vice President Joe Biden in response to the Dec. 14 massacre in Newtown. EFE

http://oneoldvet.com/

Latin American Herald Tribune - Mexicans Ask Obama to Stop Flow of Guns from U.S.

They should jump in a demand that government officils be prosecuted for gunrunning. Or, try to deal with their own violence that is being imported into this country.


Mexico Jumps into the U.S. Gun Control Debate

By Bryan Llenas
Published January 15, 2013
Fox News Latino

• 
  Mexico President Felipe Calderon near the new billboard placed along the U.S.-Mexico border, urging the United States to stop the weapons flow into Mexico. (Presidencia Mexico/ALFREDO GUERRERO)

A three-ton sign made of confiscated crushed weapons unveiled last year in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, by then-President Felipe Calderón, sent a clear and direct message to American neighbors up north: “No More Weapons.”

For years, particularly under Calderón’s leadership, Mexico has directly blamed lax U.S. gun control laws for increased violence south of the border by arming Mexican drug cartels with military-grade assault weapons. Calderón said the expiration of the U.S. assault weapons ban in 2004 directly coincided with a rise in violence in Mexico.

The drug war was severely ramped up with Calderón’s election in 2006. According to the Mexican Interior Ministry, it has claimed more than 70,000 deaths.

The lion’s share of weapons used by cartels come from the United States, but having said that, if the Virgin of Guadeloupe were to stop the flow of weapons southward it would be a nuisance for the cartels but it certainly would not end the bloodshed.

- George W. Grayson, Professor Emeritus at College of William and Mary

Now, a new administration led by President Enrique Peña is trying to capitalize on the U.S. debate on stricter gun control, which has captured national attention following massacres in Aurora and Newtown. Peña has come out in public support of measures that would tighten up U.S. gun regulations.

Echoing that sentiment, just last week, the newly named Mexican ambassador to the U.S., Eduardo Medina Mora, said he hopes the Newtown shooting “opens a window of opportunity for President Obama” to pass tighter gun control laws.

“The Second Amendment and the regulations adopted in the U.S. is not, never was and never should be designed to arm foreign criminal groups,” the ambassador said.

Mexican activists turned in a petition to the U.S. embassy in Mexico City with more than 54,000 signatures, calling on the U.S.
government to take further steps to combat weapons trafficking. The move adds to the mounting pressure on Obama to pass stricter gun control legislation.

Questions remain, however, on whether gun trafficking or gun control laws are directly to blame for Mexican violence.

George W. Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William and Mary, doubts tighter gun control laws in the U.S. will greatly affect violence in Mexico. Cartels, Grayson said, can easily find AK-47s and other assault weapons on the international market – places such as China, France, Brazil and Israel.

“The lion’s share of weapons used by cartels come from the United States, but having said that, if the Virgin of Guadeloupe were to stop the flow of weapons southward it would be a nuisance for the cartels but it certainly would not end the bloodshed,” Grayson said.

Ultimately, he said, Mexico would do itself a favor by looking domestically for the roots of the drug war - fixes are badly needed to the country's corrupt judicial system, military and police force.

“The future of Mexico success in the gun war lies in Mexico, not the United States,” Grayson said.

Some leaders south of the border agree. Fernando Acevedo Danache, vice president of the Chamber of Commerce for the Mexican State of Tamaulipas, which borders Texas and is home to thousands of drug war killings, pointed to his country's leaders and not U.S. gun policies as the main culprits for the incessant violence.

“President Calderón made moves without analyzing what was going on, without military intelligence, he auto-declared this war,” Acevedo Danache said. “We see the activities of the drug cartels are still going on … and we see have seen no results at all.”

Acevedo Danache does believe there needs to be more gun control in the U.S., particularly an assault weapons ban, but he doesn’t think stricter Mexican gun laws would be applicable north of the border.
“We need to have the right to defend ourselves,” he said.

Mexico’s gun laws are some of the most stringent in the world.
Gun licenses and permits are issued through Mexico’s defense department. To apply for a one-year permit, a person must go to the nearest military base and get added to a Federal Arms Registry. In practice, carry licenses are restricted to the wealthy and the politically connected. In a nation of 112 million people, there are only 4,300 carry licenses.

However, David Wilson, a researcher at the Mexico Institute, an independent think tank, argued that there is mutual blame to share with room for progress on both sides of the border.

“One measure in the U.S. isn’t going to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals in the U.S.,” Wilson said. “But it could make it more difficult, and a marginal gain when you’re talking about human lives is pretty significant.”

Read more: Mexico Jumps into the U.S. Gun Control Debate | Fox News Latino