With escalating drug-related violence continuing unabated in Mexico, anti-gun elected officials in Washington continue to let no tragedy go unexploited.
The latest to add his voice to the anti-gun chorus should come as a surprise to no one, as Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) has a long voting record in support of gun control.
This week, Kerry called sending National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border "premature and possibly counterproductive." But Kerry had no qualms in supporting additional restrictions on law-abiding American gun owners. (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/30/kerry-mexico-failed-state/)
For a fleeting moment Kerry sounded a hopeful tone in his remarks in El Paso when he noted the need to "work harder to enforce existing gun laws against exporting weapons across international borders." However, Kerry reverted to his usual anti-gun talking points as he called for a ban on imported "assault rifles" (presumably he meant semi-auto "assault weapons") into the U.S.—a ban that has existed since 1989.
Senator Kerry is either confused about what an "assault rifle" is, is ignorant of the parameters of the existing import ban, or more likely, simply wants to expand his gun control crusade. In either case, and as noted earlier, none of this should come as a surprise from a failed presidential candidate who tried to camouflage his decades long voting record against the Second Amendment by trying to reinvent himself as a "sportsman." Senator Kerry's plan to stop the international trafficking of firearms into Mexico by banning legal importation of firearms into the United States simply defies logic and common sense.
American gun owners should be outraged when a sitting U.S. Senator dismisses tightening up our nation's border security as "possibly counterproductive", but has no qualms about passing additional restrictions that will be avoided and evaded by criminals.