Demonizing weapons, not criminals.(international trade)

ITEM: The Los Angeles Times for January 8 reported from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico: "The most popular instruments of robbery, torture, homicide and assassination in this violence-racked border city are imported from the United States. 'Warning,' reads the sign greeting motorists on the U.S. side as the), approach the Rio Grande that separates the two countries here. 'Illegal to carry firearms/ammunition into Mexico. Penalty, prison.' The signs have done little to stop what U.S. and Mexican officials say is a steady and growing commerce of illicit firearms in Mexico--9-millimeter pistols, shotguns, AK-47s, grenade launchers. Art estimated 95% of weapons confiscated from suspected criminals in Mexico were first sold legally in the United States, officials in both countries say.

"Guns are the essential tools of a war among underworld crime syndicates that claimed between 1,400 and 2,500 lives in 2005, according to tallies by various newspapers and magazines. The biggest criminals in Mexico are engaged in an arms race.... Buying a weapon legally is extremely difficult in Mexico. The country's defense secretary issues all gun licenses--the wait is a year or more, and the cost about $1,900. Licenses must be renewed every two years. There are fewer than 2,500 registered gun owners in the entire country. Yet Mexican police confiscate an average of 256 weapons every day from suspects." ITEM: "Canadian officials, Prime Minister Paul Martin and Toronto Mayor David Miller," reported the All Headline News website for December 28, "blame the faultiness of U.S. gun legislation for the growing violence in Toronto." ITEM: "With the city [of New York] still stinging from the recent shooting deaths of two police officers," reported the Associated Press in the Bergen (N.J.) Record for January 2, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, "promised to draw national attention to gun control, which is emerging as a centerpiece for his second term. 'We will not rest until we secure all the tools we need to protect New Yorkers from the scourge of illegal guns,' he said."

CORRECTION: These accounts have at least a couple things in common: they try to pin the fault for crimes on a supposedly insufficient lack of gun laws and grant human attributes to cold steel--blaming insentient weapons rather than murderers who willfully pull the triggers.

Canada, Mexico, and New York City have long had stringent gun-control laws. Accordingly, shouldn't gun violence have all but disappeared there? Since that, of course, has not happened, gun-banners seek to point the finger elsewhere suggesting that crimes result from lenient gun laws in neighboring jurisdictions. (This pattern also takes place in Washington, D.C., for instance, where violence in the city is deemed to be the fault of weapons from Virginia and Maryland, as well as in Boston, where officials have been chastising northern New England states for not clamping down on their gun owners.)

New York Mayor Bloomberg's reference to the "'scourge of illegal guns" (in a city where law-abiding citizens have been effectively disarmed for years) suggests how he might fight obesity. The registration, licensing, and eventual banning of forks would certainly fight fat just as well as instituting more restrictions on guns will fight crime. (Keep in mind that some folks are more equal than others when it comes to self-protection: published accounts indicate that New Yorkers with concealed-carry permits include vulgar radio "shock jock" Howard Stem, left-wing actor Steven Seagal, and well-heeled big shots such as Winthrop Rockefeller and Donald Trump.)

Beyond the fact that it runs afoul of the constitutionally protected right for citizens to keep and bear arms, the handcuffing of law-abiding citizens doesn't stop criminal behavior. The virtual banning of all private firearm ownership in the U.K. in 1997 has been followed by a huge increase in crime; gun crimes in England and Wales nearly doubled over the next seven years. John R. ...