shad0wfax
Regular Member
imported post
I'm not sure if this has been posted before, but I ran across this at the White House . Gov blog and it bears reminding everyone here, even if it has been posted.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press...resident-Felipe-Calderon-Of-Mexico-4/16/2009/
I'm not sure if this has been posted before, but I ran across this at the White House . Gov blog and it bears reminding everyone here, even if it has been posted.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press...resident-Felipe-Calderon-Of-Mexico-4/16/2009/
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
(Mexico City, Mexico)
________________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 16, 2009
JOINT PRESS CONFERENCE WITH PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
AND PRESIDENT FELIPE CALDERÓN OF MEXICO
Los Pinos
Mexico City, Mexico
4:29 P.M. CDT
[SNIP]
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. President, as well.President Obama, as a candidate for your office, you said that you wanted to see the assault ban weapon -- the ban on assault weapons reinstated. Your Attorney General has spoken in favor of this. Mexican officials have also spoken in favor of it. But we haven't heard you say that since you took office. Do you plan to keep your promise? And if not, how do you explain that to the American people?
And, President Calderón -- I'm sorry, if I may -- would you like to see this ban reinstated? And have you raised that today with President Obama? Thank you.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, first of all, we did discuss this extensively in our meetings. I have not backed off at all from my belief that the gun -- the assault weapons ban made sense. And I continue to believe that we can respect and honor the Second Amendment rights in our Constitution, the rights of sportsmen and hunters and homeowners who want to keep their families safe to lawfully bear arms, while dealing with assault weapons that, as we now know, here in Mexico, are helping to fuel extraordinary violence -- violence in our own country, as well.
Now, having said that, I think none of us are under any illusion that reinstating that ban would be easy. And so, what we've focused on is how we can improve our enforcement of existing laws, because even under current law, trafficking illegal firearms, sending them across a border, is illegal. That's something that we can stop.
And so our focus is to work with Secretary Napolitano, Attorney General Holder, our entire Homeland Security team, ATF, border security, everybody who is involved in this, to coordinate with our counterparts in Mexico to significantly ramp up our enforcement of existing laws. And in fact, I've asked Eric Holder to do a complete review of how our enforcement operations are currently working and make sure that we're cutting down on the loopholes that are resulting in some of these drug trafficking problems.
The last point I would make is that there are going to be some opportunities where I think we can build some strong consensus. I'll give you one example, and that is the issue of gun tracing. The tracing of bullets and ballistics and gun information that have been used in major crimes -- that's information that we are still not giving to law enforcement, as a consequence of provisions that have been blocked in the United States Congress, and those are the areas where I think that we can make some significant progress early.
That doesn’t mean that we're steering away from the issue of the assault guns ban, but it does mean that we want to act with urgency, promptly, now. And I think we can make significant progress.
PRESIDENT CALDERÓN: Thank you for your question. I want to say that, in effect, on this topic -- not only on this topic, but on many of the other thorny topics of relations between the U.S. and Mexico, we have had an open, frank, trusting conversation between President Obama and myself. We have spoken of assault weapons. He is well aware of our problems.
And we have described it as it is from the moment that the prohibition on the sale of assault weapons a few years ago, we have seen an increase in the power of organized crime in Mexico. Only in my administration, in the two years and four months, we have been able to see -- or rather we have seized more than 16,000 assault weapons. And in the efforts we have made to track their origin -- and President Obama has referred to that -- we have seen that nearly 90 percent of those arms comes from the United States -- those weapons come from the United States. There are about 10,000 sales points in the U.S.-Mexico border -- only at the border.
On the other hand, I do believe that our relationship -- the new era we must build in our relationship between Mexico and the United States must be one with trust and respect. And we definitely respect the decision of the U.S. Congress and of the U.S. people in this regard, because they are very well aware of President Obama and his government's willingness to move forward on these issues.
We know that it is a politically delicate topic because Americans truly appreciate their constitutional rights, and particularly those that are part of the Second Amendment. I personally believe that as long as we are able to explain clearly what our problems in Mexico are, then we might also be able to seek a solution respecting the constitutional rights of the Americans, at the same time will prevent -- or rather avoid that organized crime becomes better armed in our country.
But we have to work on it. We have to work on it. But we fully respect the opinion of the U.S. Congress and we know that there's a great deal of sensitivity regarding this topic.
But there are many, many things that we can definitely move forward in. For example, in armament, it is not only a matter of seeing whether we can change the legislation on assault weapons -- we have already said what our position is -- but we might also be able to see whether they can apply existing legislation in Mexico and the United States on armament. For example, in Mexico it's a matter of enforcement, with the Export Control Act, for example -- this is in the United States -- I'm sorry -- prohibits the export of weapons to those countries where those weapons are prohibited.
And that is the case of Mexico. If we actually comply with the U.S. law -- or rather if everybody complies with the U.S. law that prohibits the sale of these weapons and their export to Mexico, we can move a great deal forward.
President Obama has made recent decisions in the last few weeks, and we value them and appreciate them -- for example, to reinforce the operational capability of U.S. border agencies in order to comply with this legislation and with other laws, in order to review the flows of entry not only into the United States, but also the outgoing flows, outgoing from the U.S., to make sure that there is no illicit money, in strict compliance with United States legislation. I think these are very important steps.
But there is a problem, and only as long as we build on this trust and we clearly explain to citizens of both countries how we must find a solution, we will be able to achieve one. We do so respectfully, presenting our position, knowing full well how the U.S. people feel about this and being fully respectful of the sovereign decisions that the United States might make, or that any other country might make.
One more thing -- one more thing I forgot to mention. One other thing we can do is to track the weapons that we have in Mexico. If we manage to detect weapons sold illegally in the United States in violation of this law on the control of weapons exports, or if, in the United States, they can have -- probably move forward on a good registry of armament or on the prohibition of certain massive sales of weapons, for example, to a hunter or to a common citizen -- we know that these people do not usually buy hundreds of rifles or assault weapons or grenades -- if we can move forward in those areas, I do believe that security both of the United States and Mexico will improve because those weapons are pointing against Mexican people and Mexican officials today.
But crime is not only acting in Mexico. It is also acting in the United States. Organized crime is acting in both countries. And I do hope that those weapons that are sold today in the United States and are being used in Mexico, I hope the day will never come in which they will also be used against the North American society or against U.S. officials, just like they are now being used in Mexico.
[SNIP]