I won’t, because I made no such assertion. However, I can easily site mafia killing after 1933. Here’s a few:
Bugsy Siegel June 20, 1947
Albert Anastasia October 25, 1957
Joseph Colombo June 28, 1971
Joey Gallo April 7, 1972
Jimmy Hoffa July 30, 1975
Carmine Galante July 12, 1979
Paul Big Paulie Castellano December 16, 1985
Nicholas Guido December 25, 1986
Fred Weiss September 11, 1989
Anthony DiLapi February 4, 1990
Nicholas Nicky Black Grancio January 7, 1992
Then there were the two Sicilian Mafia wars in the 1960s and 1980s. The most lucrative racket for them in the 1970s was cigarette smuggling, not drugs.
I did not say that legalizing drugs would eliminate gang violence; rather, I said that legalizing drugs would eliminate gang violence over illegal drug sales, just like ending Prohibition ended gang violence over illegal alcohol sales.
As I understand it, tobacco smuggling is becoming a racket again in New York due to punishing taxes applied to tobacco. Yet another example of inadvertent creation of crime and undesirable social effects by government policy.
Interesting list, but nobody cares if one Sicilian kills another. But can you please cite when the American Mafia has walked into bars, drug rehab centers, restaurants, casinos, and killed as many inside as they could?
Can you please tell us where the American mafia has had military style ambushes and shootouts in the streets? Maybe where they chase down and shoot people out for a day on the lake riding wave runners? Oh, and where they kill christian missionaries?
Basically, the difference is very real. The Sicilian mafia does not rule and inspire very direct fear in large regions of the country.
And again, why would smuggling cigarettes be lucrative? It’s a fact of life, those that write very laudable and proper moral behaviors into criminal law, create instant business for organized crime.
Legalization is half the battle. But it is only half. People who were beheading groups of 20 people won’t suddenly become respectable. The Mexican narco insurgency will ultimately need a hard military response. While legalization will hit them very hard in the pocketbook, they will turn to kidnapping, extortion, and providing services to islamic nutballs.
Unlike the middle east where they all truly support Islam, the overwhelming majority of normal Mexicans would love to see a focused EFFECTIVE military effort. Talk to a Mexican here illegally, as much as economics, they have been coming here in recent years to escape the killing. They don’t support the insurgency philosophically, they live in utter terror and helplessness of it. America has far more national interest here than we do in Afghanistan.
I support legalization, and a full military war to attack this menace. (with a huge PR effort, and with huge efforts to make it clear that unlike our invasions from 100 years ago, this is a mission to rescue that country and protect both of us from this menace.)
But ultimately, the way to kill it is to discuss the forbidden topic. HSBC, Britains largest bank is sloshing with narco terror accounts. They have recently been caught laundering 7 billion. Wachovia was convicted 3 years ago for knowingly laundering narco money and was fined 0.3 cents on the dollar. Most of our giant banks are laundering for the cartels.
Why are those accounts not treated the way an Al Qeida account would be?
So while legalization is legitimate to argue about, a military attack is needed, and the ultimate front is against the TARP banks that compete for their business.
As long as the political-banks in London and Manhattan can freely gorge on narco-gang cash, does anyone believe they will allow any government to truly hurt them?