reply to post by ModernAcademia
First of all your gun numbers are wrong. I just grabbed the first outside source. There are a number of reports that back the figures provided
below.
From The New American
Yet, those figures are wildly overblown. When pressed by William Le Jeunesse and Maxim Lott of Fox News, a spokeswoman for BATF acknowledged that
“over 90 percent of the traced firearms originated from the United States” — a very different figure. An analysis by Fox revealed that the
statistic so favored by the gun grabbers referred only to a much smaller subtotal that Mexico sent to the United States and were successfully traced;
it didn’t include the thousands obviously not from the United States that were not submitted to the BATF. As the Fox writers explained:
In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully
traced — and of those, 90 percent — 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover — were found to have come from the
U.S.
But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.
In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could
not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.
It is not our responsibility to take in everyone that wants to move here because they live in a dangerous country. Should we start air lifting people
out of the Congo? Should we allow every Afghani and Iraqi scared by the war to move here? We have to consider our economic ability to support the
increasing population. We also have to consider that making an exception for Mexico means making an exception for South Africa, El Salvador, Congo,
Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and dozens of other countries.
Immigration law is supposed to be a buffer that keeps an unsupportable number of people from entering the country. It is also supposed to act as a
stop gap to ensure the less criminal element enters the country. It doesn't always work, but if you throw it out, it will never work.
However even at that, yes certain criminals do need to become a protected class. You know why? Because there are just too many laws and almost
everything is illegal that's why.
We could debate the nuance of that somewhere else. You might find we agree in some aspects.
However, after spending 5 hours sitting in military detention (in Mexico) because I left my passport in my room, I don't think we can agree here. I
was stopped at a checkpoint outside of Durango and the car searched. The people in the car with me had their passports, and one was a citizen. I was
told that I was being held on suspicion of entering the country illegally and drug smuggling. (The car was drug free.) They told the people I was with
to go retrieve my passport.
I sat there the whole time in the sun. I was handcuffed to a rail in the back of a military transport truck. The canvas top had been pulled off and I
was just sitting there baking. I was offered no water even though it was 95+ degrees. I was also refused the chance to get up and relieve myself. Then
I was told that if my friends didn't get back before shift change they were going to take me to their post and toss me in the brig. They didn't even
consider turning me over to local authorities. To them I was a military prisoner until some one told them to turn me over to the federal police.
That is the treatment you get in Mexico for leaving your passport in your room. Yet, we are supposed to bend over backwards and welcome illegal
immigrants with open arms.
[edit on 28-7-2010 by MikeNice81]