Our fault, Mr. Holder? I think not.

As many readers might recall, U.S. Attorney General Eric "Neutral, leaning towards favorable" Holder floated the idea last month of reinstating the "assault" weapons ban, using as his main argument the idea that Mexico's violence problem is entirely our country's fault, in that drug gangs are illegally importing weapons from America into Mexico in order to battle the Mexican police, as well as each other.

Well, no, Mr. Holder, that's really not what's happening at all, according to the Los Angeles Times. The narcotics traffickers have instead used the fact that U.S. and Mexican "authorities" are hawkishly watching our shared border for a few smuggled semiautomatic rifles to effect the wholesale importation of truly military-type weaponry from Central America:

"Traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals.

Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semiautomatic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California."

Why bother laboriously buying semiautomatic AR-15s and AK-47s one by one from the vanishingly few unscrupulous Americans willing to sell them, when the drug thugs can simply get the fully-automatic versions in bulk both cheaper and more easily from countries to the south?

Of course, none of this fancy destructive gear is available for purchase by American citizens at any price, so where are the criminals getting such weapons? From the black market, naturally, just like any garden-variety criminal would:

"These groups appear to be taking advantage of a robust global black market and porous borders, especially between Mexico and Guatemala."

The drug merchants are also raiding Mexican explosives factories in order to steal large quantities of material, presumably to fashion roadside bombs and the like. I suppose this is somehow the American gun owner's fault as well; the Messiah and his lickspittle A.G. just haven't figured out how to sell that "fact" to us yet.

Is "dynamite control" next on the President' agenda? Oh, that's right, it's already the law in both countries that only specially licensed people can buy that sort of product. Banning the sale and possession of something from law-abiding citizens does absolutely nothing to the ability of bad guys to obtain the very same items, as we are now observing in Mexico.

The true cause of this entire mess is that the law of supply and demand (as well as the violent lesson of Prohibition) has yet to sink into the skulls of the leadership of both countries, and that as long as people wish to consume a substance substantially similar to alcohol in both its costs and effects, including the sitting President of the United States, someone will eventually be around to supply it to them, and these "someones" tend to not be very nice people at all.

Until then, I suppose we'll keep reading about such tragic recent cases as the one about the unarmed 20-year-old Grand Valley State University student and apparent marijuana activist named Derek Copp, who was shot in the chest by an Ottawa County, Michigan sheriff's deputy because the student raised his hand to shield his eyes from the powerful light the officer was shining into his eyes while attempting to serve a drug warrant on the student. Copp is claiming that the officer did not identify himself, but simply opened fire after spotlighting Copp and causing the natural reaction of Copp protecting his eyes from the sudden glare.

"Police have not said whether they found any drugs in Copp's apartment."

You just know they didn't find any, otherwise they would have been immediately put on display in order to justify this screwed-up raid that ending up using unreasonable force on a self-described "left wing hippie peace-keeping liberal".

What a waste, on all sides.