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  1. #1
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    Mexico Shows That Tight Gun Control Laws Don't Guarantee Compliance

    Mexico Shows That Tight Gun Control Laws Don't Guarantee Compliance

    J.D. Tuccille|Dec. 11, 2012



    Wearer-of-bad-rugs Bob Costas may have temporarily put gun control back in the headlines, but his advocacy hasn't made firearms restrictions any less intrusive — or any more enforceable. Like fans of all sorts of restrictions, drugs especially, gun controllers tend to jump from fantasies about a world devoid of the objects of their wrath to demands that new laws be passed to make their fantasies come true. Rarely do they put much thought into whether anybody will actually obey such laws, and the consequences of littering the landscape with impotent legislation. I've written before that gun laws tend to be widely flouted, and a peek at our neighbor to the south offers more evidence of such widespread defiance.

    Mexico is actually sometimes held up as an example of exemplary gun laws. Despite a sort-of constitutional guarantee of the right to bear arms, Mexico has only one gun store, which is run by the army, and severe legal restrictions on gun ownership. From the New York Times:

    The 1917 Constitution written after Mexico’s bloody revolution, for example, says that the right to carry arms excludes those weapons forbidden by law or reserved for use by the military, and it also states that “they may not carry arms within inhabited places without complying with police regulations.”

    The government added more specific limits after the uprisings in the 1960s, when students looted gun stores in Mexico City. So under current law, typical customers like Rafael Vargas, 43, a businessman from Morelos who said he was buying a pistol “to make sure I sleep better,” must wait months for approval and keep his gun at home at all times.

    His purchase options are also limited: the largest weapons in Mexico’s single gun store — including semiautomatic rifles like the one used in the Aurora attack — can be bought only by members of the police or the military. Handgun permits for home protection allow only for the purchase of calibers no greater than .38, so the most exotic option in the pistol case here consisted of a Smith & Wesson revolver selling for $803.05.
    So, the country is largely disarmed, right? Not so much. Put aside the well-armed drug cartels; average Mexicans don't let the country's laws get too much in their way. From Austin, Texas's KVUE:

    Mexico has some of the toughest gun control laws in the world. But while drug cartels have well-stocked arsenals, law-abiding citizens struggle to get a permit to own a gun.

    Even so, in the seemingly tranquil region of northern Mexico, at the foot of the Sierra Madre Mountains, it’s an open secret that many people have guns for protection.

    "Most Mexican families do have guns in their homes, and they’re illegal,” said Alex LeBaron, a Chihuahua state representative and native of the town of LeBaron.
    The Geneva-based Small Arms Survey estimated (PDF) in 2007 that Mexicans owned about 15.5 million guns, of which 4.5 million were registered in compliance with the law. As NPR noted in a story on this same issue, Mexico has no real gun-rights movement largely because people don't perceive a need for one:

    The director of a pro-gun website called Mexico Armado said there is no popular movement at the moment to liberalize the nation's gun laws. Perhaps, he added, that's because anybody who wants a weapon in Mexico — be they a good guy or a bad guy — has no problem getting one.

    The assumption is that most black-market guns come from the United States (and not all of it from the BATF). Though, with the drug cartels arming themselves with military-grade weapons that are distinctly not available north of the border, that's obviously not the only possible source,

    By the way, Alex LeBaron, the lawmaker quoted above, comes from a family descended from Mormon polygamists who fled to Mexico in the 19th century to escape American restrictions on their religion (the Romney family was included in that circle, for a while). Not only have LeBarons become Mexico's most visible gun-rights advocates, they're practitioners, too. Again, from NPR:
    One night, in October 2009, a gunfight erupted between the LeBaron brothers and a squad from the Mexican army. The LeBarons claim the soldiers came to the front gate and did not identify themselves. Fearing they were kidnappers, Alex says, the family opened fire.

    "In the middle of [the] dark, sometimes, it's better to shoot and ask questions later," he says.

    One soldier was killed. One LeBaron brother and another farmer were charged with murder, but the judge ultimately dropped the charges because the evidence had been tampered with.
    That firefight came after a family member and a friend were killed by criminals for organizing opposition to kidnappers. Not surprisingly, the community in which the LeBaron family lives, and which carries their name, has apparently since gained a reputation as a place to be avoided by criminals.

    In a country where violent crime thrives amidst Costas-style gun restrictions, people have taken to openly ignoring the law to defend themselves. There's no reason to think matters would be much different north of the border.

    By the way, don't miss Brian Doherty's take on how D.C.'s crime rate is down despite looser gun restrictions.
    Mexico Shows That Tight Gun Control Laws Don't Guarantee Compliance - Hit & Run : Reason.com




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  2. #2
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    Mexico has strict gun control laws for the average citizen but it allows the bad guys and the corrupt officials to kill and control the masses. JMO


    Fueled by War on Drugs, Mexican Death Toll Could Exceed 120,000 As Calderon Ends Six-Year Reign


    Wednesday, 28 November 2012 09:11By Mark Karlin, Truthout | Report




    Mexican cemeteries are filling up with victims of the so-called war on drugs as are mass unmarked grave sites. (Photo: libertygrace0)

    In the first part of this year, Truthout posted a series of ten articles that dispelled the myths surrounding the failed US/Mexico war on drugs. As a follow-up, this article details newly released statistics that indicate the predicted death toll from the alleged war-turned-bloodbath will likely far exceed past estimates.

    In late August, the internationally respected French newspaper Le Monde posted an editorial denouncing the war on drugs in Mexico: "The Spiral of Barbarity." The most important and ominous figure cited by Le Monde is that perhaps 120,000 (or more) Mexican citizens will have been intentionally killed during the presidency of Felipe Calderón:

    Within Le Monde, two years ago, Mexican President Felipe Calderon welcomed the results of the large-scale war committed since the beginning of his term in December 2006, against organized crime and drug traffickers. "We will defeat crime," he asserted. He addressed the concerns of those who denounced the increased violence in the country: "If you see dust, it is because we clean the house."

    Limited to one term of six years, Calderon will hand Enrique Peña Nieto the presidency at the end of the year (December 1), leaving him with a damning balance sheet of death. The National Institute of Statistics and Geography of Mexico has released startling figures: 27,199 homicides were recorded in 2011; between 2007 and 2011, the total came to 95,632 murders. On the basis of the trend in recent months, an estimated 120,000 homicides will have occurred during the term of Calderon. This is more than double the figure often mentioned - already staggering - of 50,000.

    This carnage is by far the deadliest conflict in the world in recent years. The official homicide statistics are an implacable revelation that gangrene has overtaken the nation. But beyond the number of deaths allegedly related strictly to the fight against drugs there has developed a number of industries engaging in kidnapping, extortion, prostitution, trafficking of persons and bodies - and widespread disappearances. The map of the homicides in Mexico shows that homicides are no longer only confined to the regions of strong presence of gangs, but tend to spread over most of the territory. (Translated from the French)

    Although the now estimated 120,000 to 130,000 intentional homicides in Mexico - called "homicidios dolosos" - outraged Le Monde, few other prominent news organizations in the United States or Mexico took notice. Mexico's La Reforma was an exception, when in August it estimated 95,000 homicides, based on newly released government statistics. A few other US and Mexican publications have mentioned the new figures in passing, but without recognizing the implications.

    A major source for the higher violent death-rate came as a result of figures calculated by Molly Molloy, a librarian at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces (who is cited in the "Truthout on the Border" series). Molloy runs a web site and listserv that informs many Mexico violence-watchers of information that is not readily available through either the Mexican or US media.

    Molloy analyzed a data dump earlier in 2012 from Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI); she then used a second Mexican source of data to extrapolate intentional homicides through the end of Calderon's term on November 30. These forecast figures for the end of 2012 came from an analysis of data reported by the National System for Public Security (SNSP), which compiles crime statistics sent in by local and state police agencies.
    According to Molloy, INEGI compiles data from death certificates that list a cause of death as determined by a medical examiner.

    "None of these numbers include even an estimate of the missing, the disappeared, the bodies from mass graves, etc.," she said.

    As 2012 progressed Molloy estimated the total number of intentional homicides could rise above 120,000 for the six-year Calderon administration. (Molloy most recently suggested a potential figure of 150,000 dead. But given the lack of accurate data and unreported missing persons and deaths, the figure will probably never be known.) This would compare to 60,162 intentional homicides during the six-year term of Vicente Fox.
    Molloy laid out her perspective on government criminal justice figures in a July 26 story in the alternative Phoenix New Times:

    I have tried to gather more complete homicide data from Mexican government agencies that have reported consistently over the years, and with a bit more distance from the political necessities of the Calderón administration, though there are inconsistencies in all of the data available....

    For the sake of comparison, the US homicide numbers as reported by the FBI Uniform Crime Reports have declined from about 17,000 in 2007 to an estimated 14,000 in 2011 and 2012. An estimate of the total homicides in the US for this period comes to about 92,000 - this out of a population of more than 312 million, about three times the population of Mexico.

    The press also parrots the Mexican government's claim that 90 percent of the victims are criminals killed by other criminals. From my daily reading of crime reports from Juárez - the city still at the epicenter of the violence - it is evident that the majority of the 10,800-plus murder victims there since 2007 are ordinary people, and most of them are poor: small-business owners who cannot pay extortion demands, mechanics, bus drivers, prostitutes, addicts, boys selling newspapers, a pregnant woman washing cars on the street. This city of only 1.2 million accounts for 10 percent of all of Mexico's murder victims since 2007.

    And the truth is, we may never know the actual number of people killed. Mexican agencies like INEGI and SNSP must rely upon local entities to report homicide numbers, and there is little reason to trust the state and local police and justice officials responsible for such reports. There also is the number that will never be known: the "cifra negra" - the black numbers - a term used for the missing, the kidnapped who never return and whose bodies are never found, and those who simply disappear.

    Jim Creechen, an active participant in Molloy's listserve, is a retired Canadian sociology professor with a keen interest in Mexican crime statistics. He also has taught at the university level in Mexico.

    Creechen told Truthout he believes the death toll could rise to 130,000 or more under Calderon. "How many are drug-related? Impossible to know. What I do know is that the [Mexican] government wants to downplay the number of deaths associated with the drug war."

    Indeed, the Calderon administration announced earlier this year that it would not release further figures on estimates of killings related to organized crime (as flawed as they historically have been) until Calderon left office. This becomes an extremely murky task in any case, because -- as noted earlier -- crime records are in disarray in Mexico, with only 1 percent of homicides prosecuted in some jurisdictions.

    According to Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH),

    In Mexico, where just eight of every 100 crimes committed are reported and only 1 percent of crimes are investigated by prosecutors, [this allows] 99 percent of crimes to go unpunished, CNDH chairman Raul Plascencia said.

    "This means a substantial increase in human rights violations, such as torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, arbitrary arrests, illegal searches and seizures, forced disappearances and arbitrary deprivations of life, among others," Plascencia said.

    in Mexico, where just eight of every 100 crimes committed are reported and only 1 percent of crimes are investigated by prosecutors, allowing 99 percent of crimes to go unpunished, CNDH chairman Raul Plascencia said.

    "This means a substantial increase in human rights violations, such as torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, arbitrary arrests, illegal searches and seizures, forced disappearances and arbitrary deprivations of life, among others," Plascencia said.

    Read more: Mexican rights body says disappearances, murders soared in past 6 years | Fox News Latino

    in Mexico, where just eight of every 100 crimes committed are reported and only 1 percent of crimes are investigated by prosecutors, allowing 99 percent of crimes to go unpunished, CNDH chairman Raul Plascencia said.

    "This means a substantial increase in human rights violations, such as torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, arbitrary arrests, illegal searches and seizures, forced disappearances and arbitrary deprivations of life, among others," Plascencia said.

    Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/11/22/mexican-rights-body-says-disappearances-murders-soared-in-past-6-years/#ixzz2DaCwrNt4

    But if so many non-governmental agencies allege that the Mexican government - due it its own legacy of corruption and tolerance for violence, combined with the US mandated militarization of its southern neighbor in what many regard as a show war - is heavily responsible for the killing of its own citizens, why are there no consequences for those involved?

    That's because there is no uniform standard for determining a drug-related death, there are relatively few investigations into finding out why some were shot, and many - if not the majority - of murdered individuals are innocents caught in the crossfire of a drug culture in which the cartels, the military, the police and the government are all participants. Mexican citizens are often unsure of who is protecting them versus who is killing them, extorting them, raping them, kidnapping them and displacing them. The overlap between the criminals and the protectors is frequently non-existent.

    Sandra Ley, a PhD. candidate in political science at Duke University, writing for the Mexican web site Letras Libras, corroborates the critical insufficiency of Mexican government databases to reveal the true extent of the death toll resulting from the so-called Calderon war on drugs:

    Finally, all the [Mexican government] databases ... ignore other fundamental aspects of the violence: the wounded, the missing, displaced, threatened.... For its part, the Center for International Monitoring estimated a total of 230,000 displaced by drug violence since 2007. However, even these figures are uncertain because of the lack of data, and we do not know where to begin to count.

    Currently, dozens of scholars in and outside Mexico work to fill these gaps, but when the federal government continues to hide information on the phenomenon of violence, this continues to fill us with questions. As a result, we may not ever know the real cost of the [so-called] military strategy Felipe Calderon decided to implement during his administration.

    What is even worse and imposes an indignity upon the victims - whose faces and histories are real - has resulted from the decision not to update and make the governmental databases functional. These lives become just empty spaces and blank pages that are forgotten and denied. (Translated from the Spanish.)

    For those who hope the nightmare of the last six years of the US-backed drug war will decrease under Nieto beginning on December 1, Jim Creechen warns: "When a government changes [in Mexico], it leaves room for other people to fight and try to take over the turf. Everyone is fighting for a piece of the drug war."

    Nieto's PRI political party has a long history of negotiating payoffs from the cartels in return for "franchises" in designated areas of Mexico. Given a transition between presidents and political parties in 2012, Creechen argues that violence may increase in the short-term as drug cartels and corrupted government (and military and police) interests carve out their territories.

    As Nieto prepares to assume the presidency on December 1, he and the PRI have launched a public relations campaign that is trying to promote the image of a NAFTA economic miracle occurring in Mexico. No doubt, there is evidence of the development of a small managerial class for multi-national corporations, but the greater impact of NAFTA has been the decline in small subsistence farming and slave wage jobs in assembly plants known as "maquiladoras" -- as well as continuing poverty and an increase in class disparity. Furthermore, declines in violence in a city such as Juarez, known as the murder capital of the world during many of the Calderon years, may just be an indication of a relocation of the battle for drug and corruption dollars, not of an ongoing national trend.

    Molloy co-authored an article with Charles Bowden in the Phoenix New Times about Mexicans who have fled for their lives and sought political asylum in the United States. Molloy and Bowden emphasize that the war on drugs has become a war on the Mexican people that includes the Mexican military and police doing the killing:

    The United States, the nation worried about terrorism, gives half a billion dollars a year to a Mexican army that murders and terrorizes Mexicans. The United States walls off Mexico on national-security grounds and then decries imaginary violence spilling north across the border. The United States constantly praises the Mexican government for its brave fight against drug organizations, even though in the 5 1/2 years since President Calderón launched the war that has resulted in the murders of at least 100,000 Mexicans, the delivery of drugs has not been disturbed and prices have not increased. The United States has helped to create a death machine, and now the eyewitnesses come north.

    Earlier in the Phoenix New Times story, it is noted that: "On July 4, The New York Times declared the War on Drugs a cruel failure, claiming that the price of cocaine, for example, is 74 percent cheaper now than it was 30 years ago. America has spent $20 billion to $25 billion a year to stem the flow of narcotics, to no good end."

    Not only it is a war to meet internal political goals for US politicians, it is also a thriving industry, as NPR reports in its story, "US Grows an Industrial Complex Along the Border." That is just one aspect of the profiteering - that includes the prison industry in the United States, including privatization and all those who benefit from incarcerating drug "offenders" - which is tied into justifying the assault on the citizens of our southern neighbor. There are many legal and institutional entities that make money off of the war on drugs.

    Some of the disappeared will never be found; most of the reasons for the deaths of individuals in Mexico will never be investigated; a relatively small number of murderers will be tried (and they may not even be the actual perpetrators).
    Meanwhile, even as two US states legalized marijuana in the recent November election, the so-called war on drugs will continue to claim tens of thousands of lives under the pretext of saving lives.

    It's a war of collateral damage over dollars.
    Fueled by War on Drugs, Mexican Death Toll Could Exceed 120,000 As Calderon Ends Six-Year Reign

    Last edited by Newmexican; 12-21-2012 at 10:53 PM.
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  3. #3
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    It doesnt help when ROGUE Politicians and CORRUPT Attorney General's traffic 2000+ Assault & Sniper Rifles to Mexican Drug Lords that has Mexico close to being a failed state

    70,000 Mexicans SLAUGHTERED ... Men, Women, Children and the Elderly ... It doesn't matter to these ROGUE politicians and CORRUPT Attorney General's ... these innocent people are Collateral Damage

    to give you scope on the damage ... 2,000 Assault & Sniper Rifles is roughly what you would find in a United States Army Combat Heavy Armored Division

    thats what Insane Hussain and Eric Holder did to the Mexican people and the Country of Mexico

    2000
    Assault & Sniper Rifle trafficing across state and International borders - breaking Federal, State and International Laws ~ Covered under the RICO Act

    70,000 Mexicans SLAUGHTERED each carries a life sentance

    2 Border patrol agents assassinated ~ Capital Murder

    and these Numbers are growing rapidly
    Last edited by AirborneSapper7; 12-21-2012 at 10:56 PM.
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  4. #4
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    Many of the guns in Mexico come from South America, not the US and a large portion of the guns that have come from the US were sold to the Mexican ary through the State Department's foreign military sales. Strict gun control laws haven't helped that average Mexican that is being killed by people that don't obey the gun laws.
    The liberals are blowing gun control smoke to gain power. JMO

    Mass Graves, Tortured Bodies Found in Mexico

    Published November 26, 2012
    Fox News Latino



    • AP


    A mass grave of men, apparently buried at the height of Mexico’s drug war, was found in Chihuahua this past weekend.
    The 11 corpses buried two years ago were found the same weekend eight other bodies were found of men who had recently been tortured and killed, authorities said Sunday.

    The state prosecutor's office for missing people said 11 bodies were found in Ejido Jesus Carranza, near the U.S. border about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of Ciudad Juarez. The area of sand dunes is a popular spot for picnickers from Juarez, which is just across the border from El Paso, Texas.

    Officials said the male victims were apparently buried at the height of battles between drug gangs seeking to control routes across the border. Federal statistics showed more than 3,000 people were killed that year in Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.4 million, making it one of the most dangerous places on earth.

    Prosecutors also said that officials had found eight bodies tossed along a road near Rosales, about 120 miles (200 kilometers) southwest of Ojinaga, Texas. The agency said the men apparently were kidnapped on Friday and were discovered on Saturday. It said they had been shot in the head after being tortured. Some had been burned, beaten and had eyes carved out.

    At least 50,000 have been killed since the bloody drug war began in 2006, according to official estimates – though experts believe the number is much higher.


    Read more: Mass Graves, Tortured Bodies Found in Mexico | Fox News Latino
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  5. #5
    Administrator Jean's Avatar
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    Bad guys will always find ways to get guns regardless of laws. Citizens ought to be able to protect themselves and their families imo. Simple as that!
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    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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