American gun control advocates are seeking to use the bloody Mexican drug war as an excuse to institute a new ban on semiautomatic assault weapons. This would be a major mistake for two reasons. First, it would represent a sacrifice of the constitutional rights of Americans for the problems of another nation. Second, a renewed semiautomatic assault weapons ban would do little to disarm the Mexican drug cartels.
The “Federal Assault Weapons Ban,” which prohibited the sale of semiautomatic versions of certain military style weapons to civilians, was part of a 1994 crime bill. Americans, however, have had semiautomatic assault weapons for many years, including a number designed by Utah’s own John M. Browning a century ago. The main thing that differentiated the banned weapons was their appearance. As many predicted, a legislatively mandated post-AWB study found that the ban had no discernible effect on crime rates.
Notwithstanding the ban’s ineffectiveness, gun control advocates have been trying to bring the AWB back ever since its expiration in 2004. So far, they have failed, but Mexico’s drug war has given them a new rationale to justify reviving the AWB.
The conflict in Mexico between the cartels for control of access to the lucrative American drug market has been truly horrific. According to Mexican journalist Maria de la Luz Gonzalez, some 10,475 people died in this conflict from December 2006, when Mexican President Felipe Calderón took office, through March 2009.
Many, including Calderón, the American media and gun control advocates, have attempted to lay part of the blame on American gun laws. Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws on earth, yet a large number of weapons are smuggled in from other places, including the United States, where firearms ownership is protected by the Second Amendment.
At a news conference on Feb. 25, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder responded to a reporter’s question with, “Well, as President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons. I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum.”
Holder’s statement was met with a hail of criticism, including remarks from Utah Reps. Jim Matheson and Rob Bishop, who are members of a task force on gun rights. Other antigun politicians like Hillary Clinton and Sen. John Kerry have persisted on this track, despite the criticism Holder endured.
Terrible as the situation in Mexico is, Americans should not have to surrender their constitutional rights. People like Joseph Stalin have proven that it is possible to drastically reduce crime with sufficiently draconian measures. We could largely eliminate our drug problem by giving the police the authority to order drug tests of anybody, without probable cause and sentence all those found to be in violation to 30 years of solitary confinement. But this is not the kind of society most Americans would want to live in. Each sovereign nation decides for itself what balance of liberty and order it wants to live with.
Mexico abolished the death penalty Dec. 9, 2005, which might have played a role in the nation’s increase in crime. Americans have decided the right to self-defense, enshrined in the Second Amendment, is important enough to risk the possibility that criminals might have easier access to guns.
At the same time, a new AWB in the United States would do little, if anything, to deprive the cartels of weapons. There have been, for example, some 100 million AK 47-type rifles made, and they are still in production, including at a new factory in Venezuela. These are widely available throughout the world, as are some of the other items the cartels use, such as grenades and antitank weapons (which are not available on the American civilian market). The cartels have the means to smuggle weapons in and some international arms merchants, like pizza parlors, will deliver if the order is large enough.
A new AWB in the United States will have about as much effect on drug violence in Mexico as stopping beer sales in one store will have on fraternity drinking.
Steve Warrick