Just prior to the French Revolution as government started to break down, the peasants of France started to arm themselves in what is called the “Great Fear”…it seems that with Mexico descending in to drug-lord anarchy, that is happening in Mexico, too. From the AP:
…The mutilated body of a man was found inside the trunk of a vehicle along a federal highway, police said on Monday. Officials also reported finding the bullet-riddled body of a 20-year-old man with his feet and hands tied in a residential neighborhood. Police gave no motives or identities of the men killed.
Ramon Almonte, the Guerrero state police chief, said on Monday he will ask the federal congress to make it easier for common citizens to get permits for weapons to defend themselves.
Almonte’s brother was killed on Jan. 1 in a rural town in Guerrero by unidentified gunmen. The state has been plagued by such executions.
“When you fight someone and at least you have a ‘piece,’ the person who is attacking you might think twice,” Almonte said. “We cannot go on the way we are.”…
Mexico has very strict gun control laws – the sort of laws our liberals would love to have: you can only have low-powered weapons and you have to go through a difficult process with, believe it or not, the Mexican Department of Defense in order to get a permit. Naturally, most law-abiding Mexicans don’t have weapons…of course, the criminals get all they want, including very powerful, military-style weapons (and not, it must be noted, by buying them from gun dealers in the United States…in fact, it seems that they get a lot of their weapons via corruption in the Mexican law enforcement and military departments). Just as we bitter-clingers have always said, if you make it illegal to own guns, only criminals will own them.
The fact of the matter is that the Mexican army and police, even if they were freed from corruption (a very tall order) cannot be everywhere at once. The joke “when seconds count, the police are only minutes away” is exceptionally true – especially in Mexico. Under the best of circumstances, the people of Mexico cannot rely upon the authorities for their safety. As is usual – and as is in direct accordance with American ideals – the people must in the last resort defend themselves. Thus our “right of the people to keep and bear arms” in our Constitution.
An armed population would give the drug lords no end of trouble. They wouldn’t be able to just lord it over the people of Mexico. To be sure, an armed Mexican population would almost certainly result, in the worst hit areas, with some vigilante committees…but desperate times call for desperate measures; and while such committees would make mistakes, it is still far better than just allowing things to continue to deteriorate.
I hope Almonte gets his way – and that his views prevail over the whole of Mexico. The people are being oppressed by a horrible injustice, and it is time the people were allowed to strike back.
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