Recently, I spoke with a friend in Mexico about El Paso and Presidente López-Obrador's talk of suing the U.S. over the El Paso massacre.

My friend felt terrible about the innocent people killed but was not impressed with his president's sudden interest in violent deaths.

He mentioned a couple of things that Mr. López-Obrador should keep in mind:

First, does López-Obrador want to open the door to U.S. nationals suing Mexico over deaths south of the border?  According to a recent report:

196 Americans died just south of the border last year. Most of them were murdered with 67 homicides. 66 died from some sort of accident, and 23 people drowned.

So does President López-Obrador really want to start this conversation?

Second, there is a terrible wave of violence south of the border, as we see in this recent report from Stratfor:

Mexican news outlet Milenio on July 1 published its unofficial count of murders in Mexico for the first half of 2019. Milenio counted 2,249 murders in June alone, the highest monthly number the news outlet has recorded since it began keeping its own tally in 2007. 

In fact, this is the first time that Milenio's numbers have ever surpassed 2,000 for any given month.

According to Milenio, the four states with the highest murder counts in June were Jalisco with 206, Mexico with 202, Baja California with 181 and Guanajuato with 176. While these numbers are not official, they still serve as a good barometer by which to measure the state of the country's violence. 

As expected, the country appears well on its way to another record-setting year for murders.

Bad numbers, to say the least.

My guess is that Mexico will put this idea back on the shelf.  It makes no sense for Mexico to start this discussion.

As my friend said, let's focus on the dead and their families, no matter what side of the border they are killed on.

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