Do they read the things they fund?

For those who do not know, Congress created the National Gang Intelligence Center in 2005.  Not so long ago, the NGIC released its National Gang Threat Assessment for 2011 (you can find it on the FBI website).  In the midst of the great debates about "Gun Safety" - Orwell-speak for limiting firearms rights - it is sometimes good to take advantage of the amount of data and information the government promulgates.

Looking over some of the key findings from the NGTA, it is worth noting that:

"• US-based gangs have established strong working relationships with Central American and MDTOs to perpetrate illicit cross-border activity, as well as with some organized crime groups in some regions of the United States. US-based gangs and MDTOs are establishing wide-reaching drug networks; assisting in the smuggling of drugs, weapons, and illegal immigrants along the Southwest Border; and serving as enforcers for MDTO interests on the US side of the border."

BTW, MDTOs are Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations.  It would be great if those in Congress would read the materials that come from agencies they create and fund.

Given that we - the US - have been largely incapable of doing anything to seal our porous southern border to the flow of drugs (and people) and given how well the many years of drug war have gone (yeah, right!), how well do we expect to do with the "weapons" part of the above?  Who will access these weapons?  Well, if they are illegal here, I guess the obvious answer is criminals - kind of like the drugs.  But then, criminals would normally be the clientèle for such weapons, not being able to access them legally, while law-abiding citizens will, for the most part, abide by the law.

The point here - that no one seems to want to hear - is that banning certain guns and magazines is not going to stop violence - it is merely going to increase defenselessness.  The fantasy that an unarmed society will be some Utopian vision is foolhardy.  "Gun safety" advocates like to point to other gun-prohibiting nations.  First, they are not the pristine, risk and violence-free environments you think they are.  But even if they were, none of them share a long and troublesome border with Mexico.

Add to this the fact that nothing in the proposed legislation currently being debated would have stopped any of the recent mass killings.  Crazy people will find a way.  Criminals will find a way.  Law-abiding citizens will suffer.