In Mexico
Gun rights activists struggle:
Luis Merino may be the loneliest gun rights activist in North America.
Like a kid in a pastry shop, he gazes longingly into the display cases of 9mm handguns and sleek semiautomatic rifles here at the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales, the only gun store in this entire country. Run by the Mexican military, it restricts purchases of such models to police departments.
“The ones we can buy are over there,” Merino said, pointing across the store to the deer rifles and small handguns, no larger than a .380 caliber.
Yet Merino has gotten little traction trying to marshal a campaign for looser gun laws through his Facebook group, Mexico Armado (Mexico Armed).
July 6th, 2014 at 7:12 pm
I haven’t been an FFL since ’05 but I used to make a pretty penny on anything in .38 Super from legals wanting the biggest thing that was then allowed SOTB. Haven’t kept up with it, so maybe that’s changed.
July 6th, 2014 at 7:30 pm
And while that wapo piece is sickeningly laced with snide little editorial anti-isms, they did let two nuggets of truth slip in:
“In the decades that followed, Mexico morphed into the bleak dystopia of National Rifle Association nightmares, where the criminals are well-armed, the cops are often crooked and an honest, law-abiding citizen faces stifling bureaucracy just to get a handgun for self-defense”.
Sounds like they’re describing the Chi-town of now and the everytown of the future in grabbers’ wet dreams.
Then there’s this: “Mexico City resident Irma Avila, 49, joined the Mexico Armado gun advocacy group after she was mugged at knifepoint on her way home from work two years ago. Six months later, she was ready with a .22 pistol when a thief tried to snatch her handbag. She shot him in the foot, and he hobbled away.
I want a weapon to be able to defend myself as a woman,” she said. “A gun is an equalizer.”
That’s making the case about as good as it can get made right there.
July 7th, 2014 at 6:18 am
Were there any real justice in this hemisphere, the sound track for this would be by Elmer Bernstein, and leave you wanting a Marlboro.