An important, but seemingly overlooked aspect of the current debate over gun control has to do with the ongoing violence south of the U.S. border. The Los Angeles Times recently reported that 140 people have been killed over a few week period in the La Laguna region of north-central Mexico. Their cause of death: a struggle between rival drug cartels. One such death is one too many, but placed in the larger context of Mexico’s 60,000 cartel-related deaths since 2006, these latest losses once again raise the questions, “What can be done to end the violence?” and “How do our policies in the United States contribute to the suffering of our neighbors?”
This short video produced by visual.ly offers an answer:
What do you think of the video? The total people killed statistic is a standard feature of stories on Mexico’s drug war, but the statistic on the number of people displaced by cartel-inspired violence — 1.6 million — is not. Had you heard that figure before? How best can the United States and its people respond to the dire situation faced by our neighbors to the south?
