Commentary: U.S. freedoms not to blame for Mexico's drug war - CNN.com

Commentary: U.S. freedoms not to blame for Mexico's drug war - CNN.com.

When cosmetics alone can infringe constitutional freedoms, we're all in trouble. But that's precisely how the 1994 gun ban came about. The gun-ban lobby and national media lied with lockstep conformity by playing endless footage of fully automatic machine gun fire. They fooled the American people and the U.S. Congress into thinking they were banning "high-powered," "rapid-fire," "battlefield-bred" guns designed to "spray fire from the hip." None of that was true.

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That's how gun abolitionists claim Mexican gun laws are so strict that our "weak laws" (read: freedoms) are to blame for "fueling the violence" in Mexico.

Well, to believe that:

• You have to believe these butchers and beheaders break every Mexican law they want except Mexican gun laws, which they honor -- while they break America gun laws.

• You have to believe that Mexico's drug cartels, which possess the wealth and armies of nations, prefer American semiauto target and hunting rifles over fully automatic machine guns and any other military arms they want to crush opposition.

• You have to believe Mexican drug lords -- who make Forbes magazine's list of billionaires -- don't get large lots of weaponry on the transnational black market but instead choose to trifle with paperwork at U.S. gun stores.

• You have to believe that narco-terrorists who buy fragmentation grenades, grenade launchers, explosives, body armor, biometric security equipment, infrared surveillance technology and intelligence-grade reconnaissance gear will salute and obey a new American gun law -- if only we'd pass one.