Despite the explicit protection of gun rights in the Mexican Constitution of 1857, Mexican citizens have been completely disarmed by their police and military and left at the mercy of corrupt officials and narcotics cartels . . .
The lost cause of Mexican citizen’s gun rights has found unlikely (and unintentional) support from Jorge Hank Rhon, the former (2004-2007) mayor of Tijuana and one of Mexico’s wealthiest men. According to the Washington Times, Mexican federal police and soldiers (pictured above) searched Hank Rhon’s ‘compound’ in a predawn raid after receiving a complaint of ‘armed men’ in a hotel.
Hank Rhon was mayor of Tijuana from 2004 to 2007, but lost in a run for Baja California state governor that year. He is a self-proclaimed billionaire who owns a dog track, a nationwide chain of off-track betting parlors and the Tijuana soccer team that last month won advancement into Mexico’s top soccer league.
His private zoo at one point had 20,000 animals, five times more than the famous San Diego Zoo across the border.
The announcement from the Attorney General’s Office said soldiers responding to a citizen complaint caught three armed people near a hotel and they acknowledged that weapons were hidden in a house in the Colonia Hipodromo neighborhood, leading troops to search it.
In addition to 40 rifles and 48 handguns, the Attorney General’s Office said troops found 9,298 cartridges, 70 ammunition clips and a gas grenade.
Ramirez, Hank Rhon’s spokesman, said soldiers arrived at 3:30 a.m. at Rhon’s Tijuana estate, which includes his home, a casino, the private zoo, a soccer complex and a school.
As always in Mexico, what’s good enough for the little guys (total gun control and helplessness) isn’t quite good enough for the wealthy and powerful. Citizens are all equal before the law, but some are more equal than others. Another of Mr. Hank Rhon’s bodyguards was involved in the murder of a prominent Tijuana journalist in 1988, but Hank Rhon, the son of a career PRI politician, avoided being directly implicated.
This incident raises several important questions:
- Why did the Mexican army and federal police respond to this ‘complaint about armed men’ when they don’t bother responding to well-documented complaints of drug cartels holding entire towns under seige? Or beheading hundreds of victims and dumping their bodies in the desert?
- This raid wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Mr. Rhon is a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) along with Enrique Pena Nieto, the current frontrunner for Mexico’s 2012 presidential election, now would it?
- Especially when the current president of Mexico is a member of the National Action Party (PAN) and is losing ground in the polls?
- How many of the seized guns were military M16s and the like, obtained straight from the Mexican army or police?
- The L.A. Times reports that Hank Rhon had permits for 10 of the weapons found. How many everyday Mexican citizens are allowed to own a single gun for self-defense, much less ten of them?
- Don’t you love the death’s-head mask that one Federale is wearing? It just screams “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”
With all this happening just a few miles from San Diego, it’s a good thing our border is ‘secure’ now, isn’t it?
Nice collection, 40 rifles and 48 handguns, I wonder if the reason he had so little ammunition and clips (I’m assuming they meant magazines) was that many were chambered for the same caliber and were similar types?
“Don’t you love the death’s-head mask that one Federale is wearing? It just screams “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.””
I don’t know, that doesn’t really say “Protect and Serve” to me.
I believe the federales motto is: Para servir a la humanidad.
“troops found 9,298 cartridges”
Nonsense. I know Mexican cops and not one of them can count higher than ten.
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