Running Guns

Mexico's deputy attorney general José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos ruffled some feathers over the weekend by reacting to cuts in the Mérida Initiative with the following:

"Some of us were talking, remarking that, well, this (sum of money) is all very well, but why don't we tell the Americans they could spend it on their (border security forces) to stop the flow of arms to Mexico."

Click here for an example of what he's talking about. The article talks about Culiacán, a city in which loads of outgunned cops have been killed recently. The Mérida Initiative aims to give more firepower to the Mexican authorities, but it would be much more effective to simply cut off the narcos' supply, which comes from the US. First of all, many of the officials who would end up having the hardware in their hands are sure to be corrupt. Furthermore, if you have a mortal enemy, would you rather that you both have tanks, or that neither of you do? I'd say the latter. Of course, the logical conclusion of such thinking like would be a crackdown on gun sales in the American border region, but that'd be a bigger political problem in the US than Mexico's dystopian descent, so it won't happen.