Why not tighten security on the entire border...

as opposed to just a few checkpoints?

WASHINGTON — Just a week after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton proclaimed Americans partly responsible for Mexico’s drug-fueled violence, Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder will head to Cuernavaca on Thursday to forge support for improved gun screenings at southwest border crossings.
Texas, particularly Houston, is a central hub for purchasing guns that get smuggled into Mexico and end up in the hands of drug cartels.
Napolitano, who also will visit border crossings in San Diego today and Laredo on Friday, said integrating security systems at border crossings “will help us better detect whether arms are being taken illegally into Mexico.”

Call me crazy, but I just can't help but seriously doubt that security's so bad at the damn checkpoints that they're getting the guns into Mexico, say, through the IH-35 border crossing there at Laredo. I really do wonder why is the feds are being so intransigent on this issue, especially considering the current situation leaves the border open to much worse things than illegal drugs... (h/t Codrea)

Hezbollah is using the same southern narcotics routes that Mexican drug kingpins do to smuggle drugs and people into the United States, reaping money to finance its operations and threatening U.S. national security, current and former U.S. law enforcement, defense and counterterrorism officials say.
The Iran-backed Lebanese group has long been involved in narcotics and human trafficking in South America's tri-border region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. Increasingly, however, it is relying on Mexican narcotics syndicates that control access to transit routes into the U.S.
Hezbollah relies on "the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels," said Michael Braun, who just retired as assistant administrator and chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
...His comments were confirmed by six U.S. officials, including law enforcement, defense and counterterrorism specialists. They spoke on the condition that they not be named because of the sensitivity of the topic.

That pretty much speaks for itself, I think. What are we going to do when even more malevolent elements show up in Mexico and via those smuggling routes get a suitcase nuke to, say, downtown Los Angeles or the Port of Houston? It'll be fun to see what the Hispanic and open-borders lobbies say after such an event. (besides, of course, "You had it coming!") You know, I used to think that "if you're not angry, you're not paying attention," was just leftist bumper-sticker bullshit, but more and more I see that it's the absolute truth...just not for the reasons the far left thinks it is.