We need to stop the flow of armored vehicles to Mexico

The REAL Iron Pipeline:

The drug violence in Mexico has gotten so bad that booming numbers of Mexican and American professionals are having their cars fitted with armor plates, bulletproof glass and James Bond-style gadgets such as electrified door handles and push-button smokescreens.

What could possibly go wrong with electrified door handles and smoke screens? It's not like they would be a danger to kids in parking lots or motorists on the highway. I guess if you have the bucks for all this stuff, than to hell with everyone else's safety.

Now, for those who think carrying a gun is for the paranoid:

"I feel we need to be in a cocoon that is impenetrable," said a businessman who runs factories in Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and has gotten two Chevrolet Suburbans armored since October 2007.

Maybe you should try crawling up inside a US Senator's head. I hear they're pretty impenetrable.

Now for your daily dose of obfuscation:

Customers get not only armor plating but tires that will run when flat and bulletproof glass, which bursts into a spider web pattern but won't break, even when shot with an AR-15 assault rifle, a weapon of choice among drug smugglers.

But I thought they were "patrol rifles?" Tomato, tomahto. Whatever, right Michelle Roberts?

Other customers buy a package that will turn a Ford F-150 pickup or SUV into something out of a Batman movie: A button releases a cloud of white smoke for escaping a pursuing car.

Or for putting pesky tailgaters into the guardrail.

If the assailant makes it through that, the driver can release spikes to flatten the pursuer's tires.

If you haven't already killed all of the occupants of the tailgating vehicle by obscuring the road, then some tire spikes will ensure that the vehicle ends up a flaming wreck burning at the base of the nearest tree.

And finally, if the attacker makes it to the car, electrified door handles can give him a non-lethal jolt.

Great for keeping the neighbors kids from stealing your new Chris Isaak CD too!

And here's your daily dose of stupid:

Under a 2004 regulation, U.S. companies need an export license from the Commerce Department to ship a car that has been armored out of the country. The rule is aimed at preventing drug dealers and other criminals from acquiring such vehicles.

What a fantastic concept! We should license everything to keep them out of the hands of criminals! I'm glad my tax money pays for the salaries of such brilliant men and women to make such common sense laws on everyone's behalf!

With laws like this, there's no way a drug dealer can get ahold of steel and a welder to make his own armored ride. Besides, if the Mexican drug cartels can just ride around in armored vehicles with impunity, then the Mexican government would be forced to stop selling them those RPGs and M72 LAWS.

Whew! I feel safer now.