Banning guns.

Mexico's president recently chided the U.S. for the prevalence of weapons in Mexico. If America did a better job controlling its guns, many of them might not wind up in the hands of Mexican drug dealers and gangsters. Gun control has long a controversial subject: at least in modern times. Many decry the violence of American society and lament the casualties due to fire arms. They blame fire arms as if fire arms were the cause of the rising violence and death over the years and not the people who wield them. Yet the difficulty in the call to eliminate fire arms is they have legitimate uses. It is only when guns are misused that violence erupts. They can be used for sport or safety. Some people even enjoy collecting them: much to the chagrin of those absorbed by hatred for guns of all sorts.

Baseball bats kill people. Cars kill people in astounding numbers. Yet we often provide them to teens, along with the cell phones they talk on while driving. Knives kill people but we find them in abundance in every home. We are even provided with knives when we dine out: very sharp ones at some restaurants. Baseball bats are provided in to our youth despite the danger they pose in the wrong hands. The reason we allow knives, cars, and bats, but forbid hand grenades, machine guns, and bazookas is because there are reasonable uses for knives, cars, and bats. Driving, eating, and playing baseball are all respectable, even enjoyable, activities. Bazookas, grenades, and machine guns are another matter entirely. There is no reasonable need for a person to own a bazooka or a machine gun. We do not have to assault pill boxes or defend roadblocks. The Army does. That is why they have them.

Significantly, the thing that perhaps causes the greatest death, damage, and mayhem in our society is perfectly legal: automobiles. In California, there were 3,995 gun homicides in 2008. There were 34,000 trafic deaths reported in Califonia in 2009. A drunk driver that kills a family is a tragedy. A Wife killing her husband by driving over him will be well covered on the local evening evening news. Indeed, the story might be interesting enough for networks news to pick up. (For some reason, there is a comical aspect to a jilted or spiteful lover running over her ex.) But neither story will occasion a discussion about the need to regulate or control automobiles. Even the most horrendous traffic accident will not provoke a discussion over car ownership. Stabbings can be alarming, even painful, but no one will ever argue that knives should be banned.

America is obsessed with guns. Some devote their lives to banning them. Others endeavor to collect them. To some, guns are symbolic of freedom. To others they are emblematic of crime and murder. But at the bottom of the debate, guns are simply things, dangerous perhaps, but things nevertheless. Guns do not shoot people. People shoot people. The problem is not that people use guns to shoot other people. The problem is that people want to shoot other people.

As for U.S. guns winding up in Mexico, or anywhere else for that matter, the United States is a capitalist country populated by entrepreneurs. If there is a demand for guns in Mexico you can count on Americans to try and meet that demand. Perhaps Mexico should step up security on its side of the border.