Guns and more guns

Watching the US gun debate from the outside is surreal.  It is akin to the GM food issue.  Clearly corporations have far more sway than anyone else.

As I have a wont to say, "The whole world is watching"  and goin'  "That's crazy and sad."  And because the US is who it is, these action affect others, like its neighbors.  I certainly acknowledge that Mexico is not without sin and complicity in the current state of affairs, but if you take all the guns out of the equation, things would be much better.  Of course, I realize that this is never going to happen which is crazy and sad.
from the LAHD

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.

As an example.  US Man convicted of smuggling ammo into Mexico.

Edward Sandoval, 31, from San Antonio, pleaded guilty on Sept. 6 to aiding and abetting the smuggling of goods from the United States.

According to the factual basis filed in this case, in January and February 2011, Sandoval admittedly purchased about 40,000 rounds of multiple caliber ammunition, including 7.62mm and .223-caliber, from a San Antonio gun shop for a friend who informed Sandoval that the ammunition was destined for Mexico via Eagle Pass, Texas.

Sandoval further admitted that he was paid $1,500 each time he bought ammunition for others. In February 2011, authorities in Eagle Pass seized about 15,000 rounds of ammunition purchased by Sandoval before it was smuggled into Mexico.