Gun Control? Ask the Mexicans

TEACAPAN, SINALOA, MEXICO--Ottawa’s tittering virgins are now using a few million more of our tax dollars to plead with Canadians to please, please be nice and please, please register their guns. Hundreds of thousands refused to take out firearms licences before last year’s deadline and now hundreds of thousands more are going to hide their guns before this year’s deadline.

Alan Rock started this nonsense when he was Gauleiter for Justice and Crowd Control. His successors keep it up. Ottawa can never admit error, let alone damnfoolery.

Why couldn’t they look at Mexico’s record? Long before Mr. Rock had his rush of blood to the brain, Mexico had a stated policy of disarming all private citizens. They could have BB airguns, but that was all. Only the army and the police were to be permitted firearms. There would be handful of exceptions for hunters but, as anybody with a Mexican hunting licence can testify, hunters are obliged to pass about as many tests as to character and stability as the president’s bodyguards.

For more than twenty years, Mexico has been trying to built a gunless society.

Let’s look at the results in just one state, Sinaloa.

Here, pretty well any Mexican who wants to own a gun does, if he can afford it. There aren’t more than three registered gun club members with gun permits in this village yet at midnight, December 31, you can stand in your yard and hear twenty or more pistols being emptied in the old New Year’s custom of pumping lead to the moon at midnight.

As for criminals, there are probably few countries anywhere in which they are better armed. Forget the days when bandidos had only old Saturday Night Specials. Highway robberies, a regular occurrence here recently, were carried out by men armed with the standard Mexican army AK47 automatic, known as the Goathorn Gun because its curved magazine resembles a billygoat’s horn.

Goathorn guns were used to kill two magistrates and several lawyers in Mazatlan this year. The gunmen wait at the victim’s home, knowing the time of his return from his office. There is one quick burst of fire when his car enters the driveway and a rapid getaway in a stolen car. Sometimes the victim’s children are there to see it happen.

These assassinations are far from secret. The Mexican newspapers are bold, fearless and thorough in their reporting. Today’s El Debate carries two solid pages filled with exact detail of all violent deaths in this state during February, a resume of its reports for that month.

In those 28 days, there were 56 assassinations associated with the narcotics trade. Policemen were killed, government officials were killed, drug dealers were killed -

and, in the rivalry of different drug gangs, many minor actors went to the morgue also. The assassination rate in January was about the same, one every 12 hours.

This, is in a single state of Mexico, and not a big one. Sinaloa has only 2,200,800 citizens, about two thirds of the population of B.C.

No one could have tried harder to disarm law-abiding citizens than Mexico’s rulers. They don’t buy ads to plead with gun owners. They just jail you, pronto. People can, and do, go straight into jail for carrying as little as a stray 12 gauge shot shell used in dove shooting.

Where then, with such stringent gun control, is the safe and happy society that gun control people promise?

Kidnappings, almost always conducted with guns, occur here at such a rate that the demand by businessmen for continuous protection by armed guards has gone up 40 per cent in the last year, according to government figures. These licensed personal guards don’t always succeed in protecting the customers. One of Mazatlan’s recent victims had a guard. The guard died. He couldn’t get his goathorn into play fast enough.

. Of course wingnuts like Mr. Rock will say that all would be well down here if the Mexicans would only jail more of those people who hunt doves. Most people dedicated to reforming others cannot be at rest while they know there is still an empty cot in a prison. But surely, somewhere in Ottawa, there must be a few grownups left.

If the Mexican experience isn’t acceptable evidence, how about examining the Canadian experience?

We have had controls on pistols and revolvers so strict that they almost amounted to a prohibition for a century. Only a handful of ordinary Canadians own pistols, but the criminals have all they need, they are the standard holdup weapons. Robbers will continue to have all they need until we start using our scarce policemen to chase criminals instead of the law abiding citizens.

November/02