Five years into President Felipe Calderon’s war with the drug cartels, a growing number of Mexicans are tired of shopworn excuses from a government which appears to be incapable of protecting the public from murderers and kidnappers. Life in a country which is increasingly being recognized as a “failed state” is leading more and more citizens to the realization that self-defense is the right and responsibility of every human being. That realization is leading to more and more Mexicans procuring firearms, often despite the Mexican regime’s harsh laws regulating their ownership.
Angela Kocherga reports for KHOU in Houston that the growing trend toward private gun ownership in Mexico is a result of the government’s utter failure to protect the people:
Despite strict gun-control laws in Mexico, crime scenes are riddled with bullet holes. Both drug cartels and common criminals have guns. Now more private citizens are arming themselves for protection, even if it means breaking the law.
“People are desperate,” said Rogelio “Chief” Bravo, a private investigator in El Paso who has worked for clients just across the border in Ciudad Juarez too. “They’re telling the government, if you can’t protect us, let us protect ourselves.”
Government pronouncements regarding the regime’s seemingly-endless war against the drug cartels have taken on a surreal character. For example, Mexico’s chief law enforcement official — Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna (pictured above) — recently declared that it would be at least another four years (and perhaps as many as seven years) before there would be any significant progress in the war against the cartels. And the secretary’s primary concern appeared to be advocacy of President Calderon’s sweeping plans for consolidating the country’s police departments. Meanwhile, the cartels often perpetrate their crimes with little concern for ever being held accountable for their actions; in the city of Apodaca, for example, the police chief and eleven of his bodyguards were recently kidnapped. (As of this date, no further information regarding the missing police officers is available.)
According to Kocherga’s report for KHOU, the people of Mexico actually have a legal right to own firearms set forth in the nation’s constitution. However, the nation’s laws have undermined that right to the point where it is virtually impossible for private citizens to own firearms in a caliber capable of use for self-defense.
Many ordinary residents in Mexico believe guns are banned.
“The Mexican constitution allows people to possess firearms,” explained John Hubert, a certified-concealed hand gun instructor in El Paso. “But over the years the government has passed so many requirements and laws and restrictions that it’s basically almost impossible.”
Hubert and his wife, who is also a certified concealed handgun instructor, own the El Paso Shooters Academy.
They’ve trained licensed gun owners in Texas who are dual Mexican citizens.
“They live here in the states and they also live over there. They’re doing it for protection,” said Kathy Hubert. “We’re kind of phasing that out, unless we know who they are.”
She recalled one family in Mexico who wanted tactical training.
“These people did have a ranch and they had guns. They were doing it for protection, coming over here for more training,” she said.
Gun owners in Mexico by law must register their weapons with the military, which is the only authorized gun dealer. Any weapon above 22 calibers is only authorized for military use.
Consider the fact that the cartels regularly equip their thugs with fully automatic, high caliber weapons, the possession of a “legal” firearm is of little use for self-defense. With a constitutional right purportedly whittled down to nothing more than a right to own a firearm suitable for “plinking,” the people of Mexico have essentially been stripped of their constitutional right to own firearms.
A year ago, President Calderon had the audacity to blame the second amendment rights of Americans for the drug-related violence in Mexico. Since that time, however, the alleged complicity of the American government in both arms and drug smuggling has fundamentally undermined any credibility which Calderon’s claims ever could have mustered.
On the other side of the border, local Texas law enforcement officials have little use for the dezinformatsia spread by Barack Hussein Obama. Obama has mocked citizens who are concerned about the flood of illegal aliens across the Mexican border, and cavalierly dismissed the reasonable fears of the residents of border states who have witnessed the Mexican violence spilling over the border. As reported by BorderlandBeat, the violence which the cartels have unleashed frequently spills over the border:
Texas officials rebuffed President Barack Obama’s claim that the U.S.-Mexico border is secure and told a congressional panel Wednesday that cartel-related crimes in this country are under-reported.
Steve McCraw, Texas Department of Public Safety director, said 22 murders, 24 assaults, 15 shootings and five kidnappings in Texas were linked to Mexican cartels since 2010.
“There are consequences when you don’t secure the border,” McCraw told the subcommittee. “There has been a proliferation of organized crime in Texas.”
For Mexicans and Americans, self-defense is both a right and a responsibility. The tragedy is that the governments that should be committed to the defense of that right are more concerned with restricting the rights of their citizens than stopping the criminals who are spreading chaos and death on both sides of the border.
