Pundita says Mexico is in a worse way than the administration is willing to admit; that the current policy of propping up the government in Mexico City will at some point run the risk of failing. In her view the time for reform is long overdue in Mexico.
Mr Calderón has shown surprising and admirable courage in confronting drug lords and corrupt officials, but he must find even more courage and get the elite to turn out their pockets more. What must NOT be done, and which Hillary Clinton is already offering to do, is for the U.S. to hurl more aid at Mexico to help the government build up the middle class and needed infrastructure. No; that’s the job of Mexico’s elite. If the U.S. keeps doing their job for them, they’ll never find the impetus to change.
From his letter, clearly Obrador wants more U.S. development aid for Mexico, but surely he’s aware that this business of the U.S. throwing Mexico aid, combined with remittances, has only helped to keep the elite off the hook. So any additional U.S. aid — no matter how worthy the project — should be tied to real political change in Mexico.
The AP has a combat-style story entitled “With Mexico’s army in the war on drugs”. But how much of it is headline grabbing crime reporting and how much indicative of a problem that threatens to swallow the Mexican state?
The Associated Press spent five days on the front line of Mexico’s drug war, embedded with the army’s 8th Division in Tamaulipas state, one of many organized-crime hotspots now policed by 45,000 troops nationwide. Launched by President Felipe Calderon in December 2006, the army is Mexico’s last and best hope to gain control over drug cartels and spiraling violence, which have killed more than 9,000 people since then.
But the AP’s exclusive front-row seat reveals the army offensive to be at once successful and imperfect, marred by police corruption, lack of training and local distrust. As Calderon has said, it’s a temporary fix. There’s still not a long-term solution. … “Here you can’t call police,” says army Capt. Huascar Santiago, “because they’re in collusion.”
How bad is Mexico? Is there any way to objectively know? What indicators ought one watch to know the true state of play there? Open thread.
Perhaps some useful information may be gleaned from watching the currency exchange rates and the commodity price indices in Mexico. It would be even more useful to watch Mexican leading economic indicators like trade patterns and orders, but these are probably well-doctored and well-laundered in order to conceal corruption, and we simply don’t have the economic intelligence-gathering apparatus. The exchange rates and indices, however, are public information, and to the discriminating eye might offer grist for analysis. Once we factor into account the effects of official changes in Mexican monetary policy, any discrepancies will serve as a rough indicator of the degree of leverage exerted by non-state actors.
Should the peso strengthen relative to the dollar without a rise in commodities prices, it probably means the situation isn’t that bad. In that case, remittances are likely to be steady and the level of corruption tolerable. Should the peso strengthen and commodities rise, that means aid is being back-channeled to Mexico and corruption is on the march. If the peso weakens however, we know that the dollar influx has dried up and the Mexican fief is firmly in the hands of a narco-diocletian keiretsu. The hyperinflation of Mexican money will be the most obvious outward sign that something is wrong.
The overflow of violence here in Tucson is palpable. We had record homicides here last year; not all but many drug related involving illegals. In Nogales, Sonora; in a recent shootout, the gangsters threw grenades at cops and used full auto AK’s. The cops won but it was real combat and shook up folks on both sides of the frontera. 25 miles south of Nogales, last year cartel gunmen came into a town and killed 20 cops. If the fighting turns into open warfare, the border will cease to exist and millions will overwhelm it
What will Obama do, probably nothing?
I’m not with you Matt…
I think that the Mexican economy is a dual currency state.
Currency translations are thus unlikely to be any kind of accurate barometer of the health of the state.
The drug lords are in a dollar economy almost clean through. And if it’s not dollars it’s Euros.
I can’t imagine the heavy players pumping their cash through the peso exchange market, sorry.
trangbang…
Probable first response will be the minute-men.
Then Los Pepes…
Like hell Americans are going to easily lie down to accept neo-Pancho Villa.
There would be blood.
H will be tested….
blert wrote:
“I can’t imagine the heavy players pumping their cash through the peso exchange market, sorry.”
But can you imagine a failed state that doesn’t hyperinflate its money? It’s not about what the drug lords do with their ill-gotten booty, it’s about Mexican monetary policy in response to their government’s own internal assessment of their situation. The more they inflate, the more trouble we know they’re in.
Never fear, gentlemen. Sen John Kerry is on the way. We can relax now.
Matt and Blert are both right. Blert as to the fact that the narco-lords deal in hard currency not pesos.
HOWEVER: Matt is right as to exchange rates, etc giving off some good intelligence indicators.
If the people who are not narco-lords start running for the hills, for example, they will ditch their peso holdings for about anything else.
If Calderon is seen to be prevailing, then they will be buying goods instead of dollars
and the exchange rate will reflect this.
It will be a tricky read, but probably a useful one.
When you’re a failed state right next to the hyper-power it’s all too likely to see your economy dollarized.
That is your own citizens, high and low simply abandon your currency.
Such extreme dollarization would be a tell…
It’d even beat exchange rates….
Dollar penetration could be tough to gauge though.
Perhaps a brothel acceptance index would be needed.
It was my hope that, when the PRI was pried from the Presidential Palace, Mexico had turned a corner.
More Americans killed by illegal aliens than Iraq war
Dave wrote:
“It will be a tricky read, but probably a useful one.”
Yes it will be tricky, as it serves mainly as a way of interpreting other ambiguous data, not as a source of raw information itself. The chief merits of this approach are that it is:
A) Publicly available to any interested laymen, and
B) Not confined to anecdotal or isolated reports.
Tough to get a real bite on the subject, but any little bit helps.
@ 11. Charles
Let alone abducted and their cows mutilated.
Wait… different aliens.
Detroit don’t need any illegal aliens to be a murder capital of the USofA.
I knew a bunch of illegal messicans… most of them hard-working, honest people. Some were unable to learn the lingo and that meant their employability suffered or they were an easy prey for getting skinned by all sorts of elements. Usually after few years, they went back whence they came from (or moved to East LA), because the cultural stress was too great.
This should be a simple matter to rectify, but apparently, it is very profitable for some to keep the present status quo. If accessible temporary work visa were available, with screening for criminal elements and the border was not like a sieve… but that would be too simple, wouldn’t it?
We don’t have the political will to do anything significant anymore, anything. We’re basically a couch potato nation of obese whiners who want everything but aren’t willing to make any sacrifices for it….we can’t defend our own southern border. That’s really sad. Hell, we can’t even defend our Constitutional rights. We’re now low hanging fruit.
Sen Kerry has helped his country’s Latin America policy once before.
(scroll a tad to the Nicaragua headline)
…and plenty more here.
…if you checked the (above linked) freeper report, and noted that an outfit referred to as “IPS” arranged Sen Kerry’s Sandinista Kabuki, timed to kill a contra vote in congress just before adjournment, here is that “IPS”.
Coincidentally, it showed up this very evening on Instapundit.
The End of White America?
The Election of Barack Obama is just the most startling manifestation of a larger trend: the gradual erosion of “whiteness” as the touchstone of what it means to be American. If the end of white America is a cultural and demographic inevitability, what will the new mainstream look like—and how will white Americans fit into it? What will it mean to be white when whiteness is no longer the norm? And will a post-white America be less racially divided—or more so?
As a purely demographic matter, then, the “white America” that Lothrop Stoddard believed in so fervently may cease to exist in 2040, 2050, or 2060, or later still. But where the culture is concerned, it’s already all but finished. Instead of the long-standing model of assimilation toward a common center, the culture is being remade in the image of white America’s multiethnic, multicolored heirs.
Excerpt from The Atlantic
http://tinyurl.com/98frdw
Another “tell” would be the extent of militarization of the border area.
That doesn’t require federal forces on the border, but it could include expansion of:
Border Patrol
INS
Federal funds to border states for enhancing their National Guard and State Guard organizations.
Another difficult to track “tell” would be the departure of the Mexican aristocracy (or at least their families) from Mexico, to extended visits to El Norte.
http://www.ips-dc.org/
(snip, masthead)
Next Event
Apr 20
The Cuban Revolution Turned 50. Now What? Join IPS for a celebration
Hey, IPS, be sure and invite the tens of thousands of political murderees, and the tens of thousands of dissenters languishing this very moment in Fidel’s gulags, too, okay?
Here’s the obligatory drug decriminalization posting – I know you all knew this was coming!
All of this is being fueled by profits from drug smuggling. Much of our prison overpopulation problems are the result of the war on drugs. Inner city (and increasingly suburban) arms races are being fueled by the WOD. Police forces are being turned into paramilitary forces to fight the drug war.
Now we have neighboring Nations that may (or may not be, I don’t know what to believe) unable to control parts of their territory because of the profits made through drug smuggling. Especially troubling when some of that territory borders on the US. And our Govt’s response to this is to discuss increased gun control in the US????
Like these drug lords, with all of their money, would be disarmed immediately if we just tighten our gun show restrictions. Lord knows they wouldn’t be able to get weapons anywhere else – they’d be helpless!! I wonder who’s selling them their smuggling submarines – I didn’t realize you could buy a sub at a gun show in the US.
I could go on and on, but you get the picture.
There are some very good arguments against decriminalizing drugs, and if we did it there would be some unanticipated (bad) consequences, I’ll readily admit. I just think that they could hardly be worse than what we’re doing now.
If you purposely set out to devise the stupidest possible response to the problem of drug abuse you would come up with something very similar to what we are doing now.
It never has been ‘White America’, habu. That’s just longstanding leftoid ridicule, and leftoid Atlantic Monthly is stroking the meme, setting up a straw white-man-grieving to chuckle at.
If there was such, it would’ve been the northeastern seaboard states where all the money and colleges and liberries and culture wuz concentrated for awhile, and has itself been spread out and diluted (wake up Atlantic) for 50 or 75 years already.
dtmack, your main oppo in getting the laws changed is not the squaresville population –it’s the narco gangs themselves, who appreciate (in all senses) the mark-ups as-is. The producers may be shootin’ it up on the borders and in urban alleys, but their clients the wholesalers (the Mob) are having no such business crisis at all. They might even have political support! Look askance at your otherwise left-wing full-frontal personal-license advocates who inexplicably somehow about-faces on WOD policy and that alone. Why, you might even say, the WOD is a giant price-fixing scheme on the other side of the looking glass from Taxland. With 800,000 busts a year, WOD is no small gold mine for the trial lawyers associations (who by contribution are 90% Dems), and even a large wedge of the Civil Service, which knows demand when it sees it. The whole affair is another gigantic left-wing scam.
13. Habu:We don’t have the political will to do anything significant anymore, anything. We’re basically a couch potato nation of obese whiners who want everything but aren’t willing to make any sacrifices for it….we can’t defend our own southern border. That’s really sad. Hell, we can’t even defend our Constitutional rights. We’re now low hanging fruit.
I agree we lack the political will to solve this, but we do not lack the backbone- at least the “people” (small case p) do. When the government fails enough or the violence gets too close to their homes, the people will start taking this into their own hands. It will be bloody but necessary.
I think we should look at the legal system. Will the same pattern of killing the Federal judges as happen in Columbia happen in Mexico? The elite in Mexico have been and continue to send their children out of the country. My daughter currently has a girl from Mexico living with her family as an exchange student. This girl has many friends from home living in the US and Canada as well as other countries because it is too dangerous in Mexico. The girl was planning on returning this year but will relocate somewhere else at the end of June.
dtmack @ 19
I agree. As a physician and psychiatrist I have seen the personal tragedy and the medical costs of the use of illegal “recreational” drugs. Therefore, it is only slowly that I came to the conclusion that the social and geopolitical costs of the “war against drugs” far exceed the benefits of that war. I do not know how decriminalization of these drugs will affect their use, short-term or long-term. Maybe the experience will be something like the repeal of prohibition. The medical costs may increase, but I do not think they will come close to the increasing social and geopolitical costs of the present approach.
Buddy Larsen @ 21
I agree that the greatest opposition to decriminalization will come from those who profit the most from the present state of affairs–the illegal drug industry, in the US and around the world. Unfortunately, decriminalization will not immediately end its power. It will be able to convert its money and power to other criminal activities, just as organized crime did after prohibition. Nevertheless, it will lose its main source of continuing income. It will still be a long struggle dealing with the medical, social, and geopolitical consequences of what has already happened.
Best wishes,
Jim
Pave it. And take the oil. 67 languages spoken in Mexico. What a nightmare
for anybody trying to “run the country”. Pave it or Hezbollah and the narcos
take it over and annex the United States.
Calderon couldn’t run a bake sale let alone a narco-insurgency counter operation.
Put the 70,000 troops in Afghanistan in Mexico. Close the border. Take the oil.
Call it a day. Fortress America isn’t sounding so bad. Oh, wait, we elected a Trojan
Horse President.
Never mind. Carry on with the lunacy.
i would suggest that many of the problems are already on this side of the imaginary line. It’s no longer a matter of keeping it “over there”.
22. SpeakEasy
Agree fully. The people won’t take it and it will be bloody.
In the other part of the couch potato rant it was either that or irradiate the NW tribal areas. Somehow the latter didn’t fit.
The more one travels in Central America, the more one admires the United States, wherein one doesn’t construct walls topped by razor wire around any house or item of value; where privilege doesn’t so obviously ignore the poor; where every child has an opportunity to learn and succeed, etc. That Americans squander their opportunities or take them for granted is always a shock to me, or perhaps just an inidication that a lot of Americans don’t travel and recognize, via contrast, how great a life we have in this country.
Jim Nicholas – Yes, I agree there will be many unanticipated costs and issues. I think many who would be inclined to agree with me will still oppose decriminalization because of these unknowns. I can understand, and I realize that holding with the devil you know, rather than taking a leap into the unknown, is preferable to many. In most cases I’d say that’s also the wisest course, but I think not in this case.
Buddy Larsen – I think everyone who profits, from drug lords to gov’t agencies whose funding depends on this war will stand in the way. Why wouldn’t they; their interests will be directly threatened if this were to gain momentum. But the “squaresville population” will be a problem.
To use one of the most hackneyed cliches, this issue requires a “Nixon goes to China” moment. I agree that the left is unlikely to support decriminalization, because of the fact that it would diminish gov’t power, if for no other reason.
But even if that’s untrue, the DEMs wouldn’t touch this with a 10′ pole. The GOP would be on them as permissive and soft on crime, and social conservatives and people who are uncertain of the consequences, thus backers of the status quo, would be right behind them. This is one of the easiest issues in the world to demagogue, and it would be done in spades.
It would take someone who had the trust of the above groups, and it would still be politically risky. Under those circumstances it could be done, since I think a majority (or large minority) of the rank and file DEMS would be OK with this. Bring along a large minority of the center and right and presto, we’ve done something smart for a change!
But who has anyones’ trust these days? And if someone gets it, it’s unlikely they would risk it on this issue. So we’re probably stuck doing the same stupid things over and over again, but it’s not like this is the only issue where that’s true. Unfortunately.
I think the most likely way this will happen is if we’re forced to back off due to lack of resources. When it’s no longer possible we’ll stop doing it.
Nice post, dtmack. No available followship does no wonders for no available leadership, alas –the media age, where no hero can long survive, sitting in your living room with you sorta silently begging you, the Great Power Controller, to not change channels.
dtmack 19
amen
Mark, amen. I worked down there for years, chasing around the oil patch. Bars on windows, walls around yards, broken glass set in cement atop, the norm in neighborhoods from Mexico to Brazil.
…’course, that was 70s and 80s, and the structures were carry overs from decades before that. I doubt if new homes are being built that way today. Well, maybe up until a couple years ago. Chavez has crumbled a lot of middle-class-powered rule-of-law (fair courts) reform that had been afoot for decades. Chavez is breaking it all back down to the same atmosphere of the colonial era –only worse now, because the only way out –free markets –has now been tried –and if not failed, then failing in many places. Commies are lizards from hell. nay, *organized* lizards from hell.
Dtmack and Dr. Nicolas,
Thank you for lucid posts re: WOD/WOT (War on Drugs/Waste of Time). Forgive me for seeming cold hearted but I believe the problem will solve itself if all recreational drugs are legalized. The users are excersizing their pursuit of happiness and should be allowed to in a controlled environment. Give them all they want and they will die off. Those who “see the light” and want rehab should be given that chance. It should be less costly and more cost effective than the current system.
The main problem I see with this kind of legalization is something like an airline pilot trippin on acid, know what I mean. Preemployment drug testing and a true random testing regime while on the job would be very neccessary.
Lastly, Dr. Nicolas, have you done any studies of Holland’s experements dealing with the drug issue? I always thought it was clever but never studied it in depth.
I always thought it was ironic that alchohol, the most powerful drug on the planet is legal and all the other drugs are not.
No way is ethanol more destructive than opiates or meth.
Iran already has a de facto open market for opium and its kin. The stuff is dirt street cheap, the fields are close by. Result: massive addiction wildly beyond anything seen in the West.
Opium addiction destroyed the economic base of China after the Opium Wars.
Instead the solution is term limits for drug lords. Put bounties on their heads and let the mercs earn their keep. Back in the day of Bonnie & Clyde it took the G-men a while but they finally figured it out: it takes a crook to get a crook.
Research needs to go into opiate blockers that can be subcutaneously inserted into addicts for a timed release effect. If withdrawal symptoms can be thwarted, and mega-doses of vitamin C seem to do the trick, then there is a way forward to kill retail demand.
Hopefully a new generation of anti-anxiety medication will further shrink retail demand for opiates.
In the meantime Cannabis needs to be released to the market in a branded form with controls on potency. Taxed much in the manner of tobacco, it would join it in the market place of sin products that are tolerated. Untaxed and privately marketed cannabis would be pursued by the ATF not the DEA: failure to pay excise taxes. And while, in the manner of moonshine, small grow-opts will persist RJR et. al. will drive them into dust. Even with taxes, retail prices would collapse.
Very cheap cannabis would ruin the market for most other competing play pharma. The price spread to party would be too drastic.
As for cocaine further research is needed into fungal pests so as to reduce crop yields and ruin the economics of the business. The goal would be a perpetual crop pest that blights the crop and stays resident ever ready to re-infect.
Such a fungus is already to hand for the opium poppy. It is only a matter of political will to spread it on the winds of Afghanistan.
Research is needed on finding a drug replacement for meth that does not destroy the mind. As it stands, meth is a woman’s drug since it drops weight and unleashes her libido. You can recognize the impact in many a porn flick: the performer shows a ravenous appetite yet evidences deflating breasts on an otherwise healthy 20 year old body. Because of these effects, meth has relentless demand. It also permanently damages the brain — as in really forever. Hence there can be no acceptance of the legalization of this brutal drug.
In sum: legalize the least injurious stuff, block the really dangerous stuff with bounty tactics, research like crazy to halt addition and ease withdrawals. Waive penalties for addicts that turn themselves in for treatment — and increase spending on victim recovery drastically. To not spend money on recovery in the amounts needed is absolute folly.
A special category of crime should be established: anyone hooking a victim on Class I drugs gets five years above and beyond. Like using a gun in a robbery, the specific act of introducing a Class I drug to a newbie has to be specifically sanctioned.
blert,
Well said
Marzoqu the Redneck Muslim @ 34
I have little knowledge about Holland’s experience with ‘recreational’ drug use. As I understand it, possession and use of cannabis is a misdemeanor; but there is a practice of non-enforcement. Also, as I understand it, the use of cannabis in Holland is at about the median level in the European Union countries–lower than in some and higher than in others. Hard drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, have the same illegal status as in the United States.
blert @ 35
I think we are in complete agreement about dealing with the problem of cannabis. This in itself should help a lot in reducing the power of the drug cartels and reducing the destabilization of governments in Central and South America.
And as a physician I am all for the search of drugs that will block the ‘recreational’ effects of the hard drugs. It would make withdrawal and abstinence easier for those who desire that goal. And that would reduce demand to some extent.
I am more leery of hoping to find replacement drugs that provide the desired effects but that are not damaging to health, especially of the brain. I keep in mind the fact that heroin was introduced as a miraculous replacement for morphine, believed to have all of the benefits of morphine but not addictive. It is possible, I suppose, but it seems unlikely that drugs that attach to the same neurotransmitter receptors as do heroin or cocaine will not also cause the same addictive or behavioral problems.
It was the experience in China and even in Europe that made me resist for so long the idea of decriminalizing the hard drugs and treating them as you propose, and as I favor, dealing with cannabis. I am not sure my fear of that has even decreased. Rather, it is that my fears of geopolitical destabilization have increased.
Best wishes,
Jim
I live in Central Mexico near Guadalajara. I suggest that you look at the statistics for violent crime and you’ll find that Mexico is far down the list from the USA. The War on Drugs spread from the US to Mexico not the reverse. The drug cartels are big business with a huge customer base north of the border…supply and demand. Stop the demand and the supply will dry up. Mexico is a functioning 2nd world country with many 1st world aspects and could be a really successful country if given the time for its democracy to mature. The US can solve the problem by decriminalizing and limiting the prohibition on drugs, working on Mexico to lower tariffs and trade barriers ( NAFTA is really a one sided affair for the US)and provide a secure border to stop the flow of drugs north and guns and money south. There is no will in DC to do this and the problem on the US/Mex border will only get worse as the cartels fight for control of the routes into the US and distribution.
Were I the Richard Potato, there would be no more drug laws, period. By midnight tonight if not a bit sooner.
And within a period of not more than 3 years, we would be at the irreducible minimum of drug addicts. Be a lot of pauper funerals getting to that point and some collateral damage as well, but temperance would rule the day. Prior restraints are suicide.
As far as legalization causing an epidemic: to believe that, is to believe that somewhere there’s someone who wants some of these substances and can’t get them because they’re illegal.
Blert,
You make some good points. I’m not with you on the spraying crops in foreign lands, I think we need to start getting out of that type of business. I’d rather destroy the market for illegal drugs in this country and ignore the growers.
You cite meth as one that should never be decriminalized. Maybe so, and there’s probably others, but at least the problem would be manageable. I believe meth in particular is mostly concocted domestically using easily obtained ingredients, so there’s probably not a huge drug lord profit to be made from it. Motorcycle gang profits may be another issue, but we can deal with that separately.
Buddy writes: “I doubt if new homes are being built that way today. Well, maybe up until a couple years ago.’
Unfortunately, it’s even more so today. There are nicer houses with nicer metal grills and even more razor wire. Poor folks just use re-bars and barbed wire.
About supply and demand re. drugs: Do anti-use campaigns even exist any more?
Not often considered but true, prostitution is linked to hard drugs.
Hence it is essential to decriminalize prostitution for adults. It needs to be regulated in the manner of getting a drivers license.
For a trivial fee a sex license would be issued to any adult. Exclusions: violent felons, legally insane and those infected with the notorious diseases. (HIV etc.)
A condition of the license would be disease testing at some appropriately short interval. For the general health of the public license holders would be expected to provide a contact list ( phone numbers would do ) so that transmission of disease could be stopped. All fees to be nominal/subsidized for the greater good of society.
Any addicted person discovered would be offered free medical treatment without criminal prosecution.
This approach would ruin the economics of drug-whore-pimping as the players would shift their action to cleaner prostitutes.
This would also inflict quite a nick into gangland profits and police corruption. Criminalizing prostitution just means that virtually every cop you’ve ever met has received free ‘action.’
State regulated gambling ruined the mob’s ‘book.’ We need to go right down the list and ruin the economics of every mob franchise.
BTW the fungus that attacks the opium poppy is very species specific. It also will not get every poppy. It’ll just get enough to make growing a lousy business decision. Unlike chemical agents the fungus is a parasite and thus persistent.
No society has ever successfully endured unrestricted opiate use. Right now its number one victim is the Iranian economy. It’s just impossible to let such damage occur.
Let’s start with the easy stuff and see what happens.
Folks,
Sorry it took so long to catch up. Work beckoned. After reading the latest comments, I learned a little more. This is why this is one of my favorite sites. Good discussions.
Dr. Nicholas, thanks. One story I read about Holland is how they allow addicts to do their thing at specific locations under some control. These locations are used for study of the addiction problem and also as an exhibit to educate those who are interested in seeing the effects on the addicts.
Blert #43. You made an excellent point about addictive drugs and prostitution. Again, this reminds me of Holland. Your comment #43 is excellent IMHO.
Salaam eleikum Y’all!
sigintel:
“…provide a secure border to stop the flow of drugs north and guns and money south…”
True the drugs flow North along with people. Cartels are getting into human trafficking also. Guns south – I call BS. Prove it. This is a red herring. Some guns maybe but the meme is becoming full-auto weapons which is impossible UNLESS they are military sales from the gov’t. You CANNOT buy full-auto weapons in the US without HUGE expense and paperwork via BATFE.
AND the violence is not a product of the US side of the equation. It is directly tied to resistance by the cartels to enforcement by the gov’t of Mexico.
Solution to all of it – close the border TIGHT. Nothing comes thru that we do not know about. Mexico crying wolf is also BS. The most restrictive immigration laws is the hemisphere are Mexico’s. Illegals there (coming from further south) draw LONG prison sentences they MAY survive if they have enough money. Also, it is illegal for a private citizen to own weapons south of the border.
“When guns are criminalized only the criminals will have guns.”