blame america

The Wandering Minstrel pointed me towards someone who handed Secretary of State Clinton’s recent trip to Mexico far better than I ever could have, so I will simply tell you to head over and check it out. Short, sweet, to-the-point. I like it.
I might add a few things to it, though, especially given some of Secretary Clinton’s idiotic quotes from this BBC article:

“During that time,” said Mrs Clinton, “police in America were able to drive down crime because they didn’t have to worry about these assault weapons getting into the hands of criminals and gang members.”

There is absolutely no evidence that the national assault weapon ban, or the individual state assault weapon bans, decreased crime. None. Nada. Zilch. Claiming otherwise is at best ignorant, and at worst outright lying.

“So we will make the case that we need to put more teeth in the law, try to prohibit the sale outside of our borders of these guns,” she said, stressing that Congress might oppose such a ban.

Strange, I could have sworn that being a citizen or legal resident of America was a requirement to purchase a firearm. Oh, wait, it is. And I could have sworn that straw purchases are already illegal. Oh, yeah, they are. And I could have sworn that only certain firearm dealers with appropriate permits and registrations are allowed to sell or transport firearms to or from other countries. Oh, right, they are. Misinformation, whether it is willful or unintentional, is still misinformation.

She also acknowledged that US efforts to ban drugs had so far been unsuccessful in stopping the narcotics trade.

“Clearly, what we have been doing has not worked and it is unfair for our incapacity… to be creating a situation where people are holding the Mexican government and people responsible,” she said.

So because the Mexican government is completely incapable of dealing with the drug cartels in its borders, and because that same government is completely incapable of patrolling or controlling its own border, their problems are suddenly entirely our fault? I will not deny that we do share some of the responsibility (simply because our government seems completely unwilling to actually control our sothern border), but not holding the Mexican government responsible for their own shortcomings and failures would just be stupid.
Likewise, Secretary Clinton admits that our current ban on (some) drugs is not working so well. Further, she admits that our borders are pretty damn near entirely permeable. And yet she wants to institute a ban on (some) guns. Yeah. Ok. That seems rational.
As usual, politicians’ relationships with the truth are loose, at best. Hope and change, folks, hope and change.