Mandatory death penalty for capital offenses, including major drug dealers, would stop it.
I sincerely doubt that. Drug trafficking is so profitable that there'll always be someone to take the risks. Many rapes and murders are committed by individuals that are sociopathic or unstable. Not the types to think "well, if I do this, and get caught, they'll execute me" before acting. Violent crime is often irrational. Using logic to combat it can be a tenuous proposal.
Moreover, I fail to see how it's our responsibilty to deal with illegal gun trafficking. The government has a huge federal agency, paid for by OUR TAX DOLLARS, dedicated to just that purpose. Again, if you don't feel the ATF is doing an adequate job at this, write them a letter and tell them to spend less time bothering gun show vendors and more time trying to find freighters full of Chinese Kalashnikovs.
What you seem to be implying is that since we're "gun people", or however you want to phrase it, illegal gun trafficking is somehow "our" problem, and "we" need to find a solution for it. Do you also expect auto enthusiasts to tackle the serious car theft problem in this country? Do you expect pilots and aviation buffs to come up with a way to prevent another 9/11? Is it the responsibility of readers of
Cat Fancy magazine to find a solution for animal cruelty?
Or, would it be fair to say that "we", as a society, have "law enforcement", paid for by our tax dollars, whose sole task it is to deal with these problems?
Anyway. Here's the real beef.
Everytime the government attempts to tackle gun crime, they
invariably pass laws infringing on the rights of the citizenry. Laws that criminals, by the way, ignore.
Now, granted these measures don't work. But for the politicians, they can point to their passed laws and say, "See? SEE?? We're doing
something. Even if it doesn't work, at least we're trying!"
Take the 1994 "Crime" Bill. That is the law that requires us to now go through a background check each time we buy a firearm. Compare firearms-related crime statistics with the passage of the bill, and you'll find...
...nothing. Not the slightest statistically significant difference. The implementation of the NICS system cost millions of dollars, and now, essentially, you have to check with the government and see if it's okay for you to buy a gun. (Can you imagine having to pass a background check before publishing a book?) And what did it accomplish? Nothing. Nothing good, nothing bad, nothing period. It's an irrelevancy as far as the black market is concerned.
So I put the question back to you. What exactly is it that YOU think we, the government, or whoever should do about this? What proposals do you have? Simply lamenting others' lack of concern for an issue while offering no solutions yourself is a little bit intellectually dishonest, after all.
Personally, you'll never convince me that there's some combination of laws that the government can pass to keep people from breaking those laws. The root causes of what you're concerned with are serious, complex social and societal issues, and no amount of legislature is going to fix
that.
And that's the extent of the government's power. They can make things illegal, and they can punish people for breaking those laws. They can't pass a law that says "Drug dealing is no longer profitable", thinking that since it's no longer profitable, people won't do it anymore. Actually, I should watch what I type. I might be giving some congressman an idea...