Mexico drug violence not an 'emergency,' White House says

Source: MSNBC

While drug violence continues to spread in Mexico, White House officials have decided the situation doesn’t rank as an “emergency” under federal rules, officials tell NBC News. The decision scuttles — at least for now — a controversial proposal requiring gun stores in four Southwest border states to report multiple sales of semiautomatic assault rifles and other long guns to authorities.

The decision to delay the proposed federal rule, which comes amid fresh reports that rival cartels are waging murderous gun battles in the once peaceful city of Guadalajara, drew an unusually sharp rebuke from Mexico’s ambassador to the United States.

“It is certainly disappointing that politics trumps sound policy,” Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan said in an email to NBC about the White House decision. “We can’t keep on fiddling while the issue of arms trafficking to Mexico continues to burn.”

The gun reporting rule was announced in December by Kenneth Melson, acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, an arm of the Justice Department, as an important step that the U.S. government could take to help staunch the flow of illegal weapons to the Mexican drug cartels.



Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41495274/ns/us_news-security/

I'm not so sure the reporting requirement would help, but the Obama administration seems to have bungled this message badly.

Except for the hundreds of innocent people who are dying each year because of our fucking drug use. :shrug:

I would argue that hundreds of innocent people are dying each year because our corrupt politicians utterly refuse to rescind a policy that any educated person knows full well failed in the nineteen twenties and has been failing ever since.

That would be the best thing for everyine, but I also do this we should look at our drug use -- not pot neccessarily, but stuff like coke.

How about stuff like nicotine?

Alcohol and nicotine cause immensely more societal damage in our country than do cocaine or heroin, why do those two drugs always get a pass when discussing the legal status of recreational drugs?

then nothing is an emergency for them any more.

The problem has been a long ongoing and steadily increasing problem. I don't see why an ongoing and well known & forseen problem requires such radpid response. I prefer to use due process and congress to actually pass the measures above the table. ATF, TSA, FBI... I'm tired of alphabet agencies writing the laws on a whim that they then get to enforce themselves. The whole fox guardin gthe henhouse thing, you know.

All those pictures of seized rocket launchers, machineguns, & grenades we see in news reports... that shit isn't coming from american citizens or private sales. That is military hardware. Maybe if Mexico valued security over enabling the export immigrants to the US... the border would be easier to secure.

MSNBC needs to get thier facts straight. No such thing as a semiautomatic assault rifle.

"All those pictures of seized rocket launchers, machineguns, & grenades we see in news reports... that shit isn't coming from american citizens or private sales. That is military hardware. Maybe if Mexico valued security over enabling the export immigrants to the US... the border would be easier to secure."

For that matter, what is an "assault rifle"?

The WH and Congress and most urban governments.

They are weighing in on everything, not just guns and ammo.

There was a great segment on NPR regarding this a few weeks ago. The report claimed NRA is now the heaviest lobby in DC.

Sonoman

I shouldn't have been surprised, but I had always seen them as gun-centric.

They are into everything.

Sonoman

our drug laws are.

Look what happened here when prohibition ended: http://forum.sportsmogul.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=18149&d=1219605394

That drop didn't occur because the 21st amendment banned guns.

The timing of the release of this statement, is indeed interesting.

Perhaps even an "Ay caramba!"

But certainly not an emergency!

at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

But for anyone who lives near the border it sure as heck is.