Recently I watched one about the drug wars in Mexico and the whole gun culture that feeds it and I came up with the obvious conclusion that we must legalize marijuana and make a lot of this violence stop immediately. But that is not profitable. I learned that there are at least 7000!!! gun shops along the border to Mexico and the owners are not even required to report their sales. The Mexican drug cartels are armed by American assault rifles. They are brought into Mexico by the truckloads from the US and are rarely seized. It was shocking. It all has to do with the National Rifle Association (NRA), backed by $250 million, and the gun lobby, which works tirelessly to make the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms powerless to change this situation. There was an interview with the head of the ATF Agency who basically said that no matter what they do, the gun lobby wins. The footage of the carnage in Mexico made me look away sometimes. The body count is rising and in the last four years, at least 7000 people have been murdered. One American gun shop owner was interviewed and asked if he knew that his guns were being used for killing in the drug war and he said yes. Asked if he felt any regret about the situation, his response was No, this is America. Whaaa?
Incidentally, Wisconsin has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the country and they even showed footage of a big community bbq/picnic where all the men were "packing". They were all, without exception, enjoying the picnic with guns stuck in their belts....I mean with little kids running around and all that!!! I had to wonder if this was the same planet as that one.
I am not against anybody owning a gun (but keep it in a locked box in car trunk or truck if you must keep it with you, for God's sake!)but I am very against ANY individual owning an assault rifle. I do not know what to do about this problem, honestly. It is all based in FEAR. Yes it is. Fearful people need to wear guns to a community picnic.
But the subject was marijuana. While it is a No-Brainer that medical marijuana should have been legal nation wide before this, and Obama has missed the boat on that one, I believe all marijuana should be legal and let them tax the hell out of it like they do everything else. They might still kill each other over cocaine, but it sure will reduce the carnage immensely and free up tons of room in the prisons. And speaking of prisons, the for-profit route we are going in just puts all those criminals back into a position of slavery with little hope to rehabilitate and get out ever. They need a quota in those places to get their money...and Boy, do they get it.
Another reason to legalize the cannabis plant is to free up the production of hemp, a most useful and strong material that was once in common use in industry. Politics & greed caused it to be outlawed but I hope we can swing the whole thing around before long. It is greed that has caused the drug war fed by gun sales, and since the demand for marijuana will not be going away, there is only one solution.
I don't have a suitable photo for this article either, so I will again just add one of my drawings/pntngs. These are my Camelias. They are not in bloom at the moment but they are budding.
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