Okay this is Tombstone, AZ. What most of us think of when we say wild west. The streets are pretty quiet except for the scheduled staged gun fights. But this all is pretty tame compared to what is happening in Arizona right now.
I don't usually get political in my writings. Aside from the fact that a lot of the wildness is due to political driven actions, I shall not attempt to take sides. I will not venture to predict what should be the right outcome but just try to give you the facts. After all I am just visiting and my opinions do not hold the pain or the passions of the locals.
The most unsettling to me, an old hippie, is the ever presence of guns. During our stay the courts upheld their state gun laws. No restrictions, no need for a permit to carry, openly carried in holsters and purses. Now I understand the need to bear arms due to the wide range of wildlife wandering in their backyards; such as rattle snakes, coyotes, javelinas, rabbits the size of kangaroos and spiders the size of small cats! Of course you don't shoot everything that moves.
I also became aware that a part of the reason to "carry" was also because of the desert and the people who might be there. I know it is a hard concept to grasp unless you live with it every day. Just as I cannot grasp being afraid every day...as foreign as the concept of terrorism. Well here is another hard to grasp concept, the problem with the border is not entirely an immigration problem but also a drug related problem.
We have not won the war on drugs that we have engaged in over the past decades and our immigration laws are not working. We desperately need to revise both our immigration and our drug laws. I do not believe that a very volatile situation will be made better by more law enforcement officers, or by more guns, and more anger. I have no solutions, though I do feel legalizing marijuana would stop some of the traffic and that more user friendly paths to citizenship would ease the problem somewhat. I have a plan just ask me!
I am also inclined to wonder why now? No one complained about the illegals when they were employing them as gardeners and maids. Or if you were a big business employing them cheaply. But now that we need a scapegoat during this recession it becomes a larger than life issue? Senators who supposedly have been working on this for years now want to blame a new administration? Why wasn't it taken care of when Mr Texas, a border state, was president?
What I am saying is that the west can still be very wild.
