Who Knew, US Gun Laws Fuel Illegal Immigration

I just finished reading a book about the flood of undocumented children that presented themselves to Border Police in the summer of 2014.  These children would still be coming except the U.S.A. under Presidents of both parties have convinced Mexico to prevent them from transversing Mexico to arrive at the U.S. border.

There is much to be heartfelt about the story of these teenagers who really just want a safe place to live, grow up and be useful citizens to the country in which they reside.  But the really awful thing is how U.S. policies promoted by Conservatives have a direct link to creating the environment that forces these children to have to make a life or death decisions and both paths are high risk.

For the most part, illicit drugs are illegal in the U.S.  Many of these drugs are produced in South America.  While the Mexican cartels have been leading traffickers of these drugs, this activity has now been muscled into by gangs further south in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.  So it is U.S. demand for illegal drugs that fuels criminal activity in these countries.

These gangs are violent and they have ready access to weapons sold in the U.S.  The U.S. has no effective controls on gun purchases thanks to the N.R.A. convincing any number of states to allow unlimited purchases of these weapons by a single individual.  And the N.R.A. also has killed any effective control of automatic weapons.  If these gangs can smuggle drugs into the U.S., they can smuggle guns the other way.  And boy do they ever.  They are violent and unafraid of any police in their country because they have more money and guns than the police do.

Because there are rival gangs, the gangs suffer losses and need new recruits.  They try to force children to join them and if the children don't agree to, they are intimidated and frequently killed for daring to say No.  So the children have a stark choice: (i) stay and be killed or (ii) flee to the U.S.,  be potentially harmed or turned around along the way in Mexico, and if they make it to the U.S., face a hostile government that wants to send them home to be killed or become a gang member.

And these gangs have an impact on life in the U.S.  The gangs from those countries have outposts in the U.S.  Barrio18 &MS-13 have been shooting up certain towns in Long Island the same way they do in their native countries.  Trying to intimidate kids into joining them or killing them if they say no.

Now I will admit that is the U.S. demand for these drugs that provide the money that causes all this.  But the War on Drugs was started by Richard Nixon and is now almost 50 years old.  Might it be time to start discussing legalization and treatment for addictions?  I think so, but not with Jeff Sessions as the Attorney General.  He thinks all drug users should be thrown in jail.  Even Chris Christie thinks that is nuts.

But the U.S. has to do something about the availability of guns in bulk purchases.  There are reasonable regulations that would do nothing to harm the average American's ability to buy another weapon while protecting society from madmen and criminals.