An audacious band of citizen militias battling a brutal drug cartel in the hills of central Mexico is becoming increasingly well-armed and coordinated in an attempt to end years of violence, extortion and humiliation.
What began as a few scattered self-defense groups has spread in recent months to dozens of towns across Michoacan, a volatile state gripped by the cultlike Knights Templar, a drug gang known for taxing locals on everything from cows to tortillas and executing those who do not comply.
Gun laws are FAR stricter in Mexico than they are here in the US – many calibers are restricted to the military or law enforcement (.380, .22, 9mm are permitted with some other exceptions, so are shotguns > 25″), Federal Government highly restricts the sale and purchase of private arms, legal open carry is illegal except by Government permission, private sales are prohibited, and guns are sold in government regulated shops only. While there is the idea of gun ownership in the Mexican Constitution, it is not like that of the US one.
The army deployed to the area in May, but the soldiers are mostly manning checkpoints. Instead, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is facing the awkward fact that a group of scrappy locals appears to be chasing the gangsters away, something that federal security forces have not managed in a decade.
The Mexican drugs cartels have been around for a long time – mostly due to the demand here in the States and the money drug users can spend for it. During all that time, 10s of thousands of Mexicans have died in this drug war – and their Government has been all but powerless to protect its citizens from its ravages. Ordinary citizens, law enforcement, journalists, military, elected officials – all types of folks have been gunned down or made to “disappear” for being threats to the cartels’ profits or turf. The State has been powerless to protect its citizens even if Piers Morgan, Diane Feinstein, and now FORMER Colorado State Senator Angela Giron have argued otherwise (and Colorado voters decided to disarm her legislatively).
A perfect reason, a perfect illustration why citizens are taking it upon themselves to arm themselves to take on the responsibility of defend themselves, their family, and their community. What would that trio of gun grabbers tell them – simply trust your elected officials and Government, in the face of abject failure? What if those folks did what that trio wanted – outsource your responsibility to defend yourself, to lay prostrate before Government and whine “protect me” just like that picture that will never leave me of that young black girl knee deep in Katrina’s flooding of New Orleans, pitifully crying “Help me” – a ward of the State unable to fend for herself. Or unwilling (who knows which)?
Liberals here in the US are adamant to see that our general population be disarmed. Period. They believe that Government is here to protect us (even as the Supreme Court decided that police are not here to protect individuals) – so why do we need guns? “You don’t need that” is their demeanor – they can’t understand, or do not wish to admit, that only a Fascist police state could only BEGIN to address the problem.
Yes, there are differences between Mexico and the US in most places and in many policies. But one thing is true – when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, the only “people” you can depend upon to protect you….is you. Those brave citizens, thousands of miles from New Hampshire, are living the philosophy behind our state motto: “Live Free or Die”. They refuse to subject themselves to the cartels or their failing Government – they are choosing Freedom.
(H/T: Washington Post)
