[BajaGringo]

I got a lot of PM’s over this one and those disagreeing with this proposal seemed to mostly fall along the lines of not wanting to make Mexico another USA with everybody owning a gun.

My response to each and every one of them was:

There are LOTS and LOTS of guns already here in Mexico, just like the USA but you know what’s different?

1. In the USA 99.9% of the guns are owned by law abiding citizens but in Mexico, 99.9% of the guns are owned by criminals.

2. In the USA the homicide rate is 4.96 people per 100,000 and in Mexico it’s 29.07 people per 100,000 – nearly 6 times higher.

3. In the USA the police are highly trained, well paid and difficult to corrupt but in Mexico the police are poorly trained, poorly paid and quite easy to corrupt.

4. In the USA, kids have easy access to guns and a few of the more troubled ones go to their schools and shoot their classmates. In Mexico, kids have easy access to organized crime and a few of the more troubled ones join a cartel and get their own AR-15 to shoot at other cartels, they don’t go to their schools and shoot their classmates.

5. In the USA, police catch the criminals, arrest them, jail them and the judges send them to prison for long sentences, especially repeat offenders. In Mexico the police are slow to respond, often already paid off by the criminals and even if they do arrest them, under the new criminal justice system here pushed through by the Human Rights organizations, criminals are back out on the streets within hours and if they are charged, judges are easily bought off for minimum or even no prison sentences.