“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. Meanwhile, many Mexicans look north with horror and bewilderment to a land where deranged young men casually mow down first-graders, taking comfort knowing their crazies can’t just order up a Glock on the Internet. After all, people here tend to kill for power and money, not to act out some video-game fantasy or prove a point to their mothers.” – Activists struggle to loosen gun laws in Mexico [via washingtonpost.com]
I dont get what’s so difficult about liberty vs. the statistically insignificant event.
It’s be like banishing rain because lighting burned a house down. Then we all die from lack of water in our nice safe houses.
There are two things here. First is the fallacy of misleading vividity. When you only hear one side of things for long enough, your perceptions skew toward that one side. Most gun owners actively seek out stories on DGUs and most others don’t. It’s the same reason why so many people listen to radio pop music; they don’t know there’s something else out there.
The second thing is that, while the events are statistically insignificant, phrases like that really turn people off because it sounds like whoever is saying them are downplaying the fact that people are hurt or dead. Like it or not, statistical significance doesn’t matter because once you’ve pushed someone into an emotional state, you will never be able to reason with him or her.
Winning people over to our side requires tact that, sadly, not enough gun rights supporters seem to have.
I would appreciate it if more Mexicans would look at the USA in horror.
Of course, the current wave of illegals are mostly from south of Mexico. Maybe if the USA won’t enforce its southern border we can pay Mexico to protect ITS border instead of sheltering the coyotes.
They’d never agree to it. They need that American cashola coming south of the border to prop up their economy.
Or the Mex gov’t would take the money, agree to the terms, then not actually do anything, all the while pocketing the money…
Which would be the most likely outcome.
Just like we’re doing.
You just described the present, longstanding arrangement.
Maybe once upon a time. But not now. The economy is Mexico is pretty strong and ours not so much, and that’s why there aren’t that many coming across for the last few years.
For the record, though the current flood of immigrants in the news is, as ever, coming over the Mexican border, most of them aren’t actually from Mexico, especially the women and children. Instead, the majority of them are from places further south in Central and South America, and are merely transiting Mexico on their way north.
That vaquero’s mustache and AK are on point.
Yes, yes it is
That’s a Norinco Type 56s, some would argue its not really an AK because the Chinese built them without proper licensing from the Russians. But, it’s a damn fin looking one at that.
I wish we could – you know – GET those in this country. New manufactured ones I mean.
What a snide comment. People here also kill mostly for money and power as well. Mexico has had many incidents of serial killers, etc. By pushing ridiculous American stereotypes, our media has essentially disarmed the souls of the Mexican people, to the point where they are literally standing in the middle of a war zone and yet are STILL able to comfort themselves with anti-American drivel.
Hey, and thank God your media paints Mexico as a war zone. Unsafe at any costs. Totally oblivious to the large numbers of gringos traveling there and the huge numbers of Canadians and Europeans vacationing in Mexico at all times.
So you’re saying all those bodies simply do not exist? More people are killed in Mexico than most war zones. I was in Mexico City in 84 before all these problems started and there were military everywhere with machine guns. Friends of mine went to the west coast of Mexico and had to be escorted every where they went my armed Mexican Military. Today its a thousand times worse, there are some border towns that have been completely depopulated by the Drug Cartels. Innocent people are murdered every day down there John.
@JG Not to educate you of course, but this article is pointing to the Washington (com)Post narrative, not really a bastion of right-wing media…
Wow the logic train seems to have left the station before this guy arrived. The thoughts are so convoluted and twisted up that it is really an impressive display of writing.
It is incomplete but here goes :
Talks of US crazies just ordering up a glock. Mexico army deserters in droves join cartels with weapons taken from armories.
Talks of mowing down school kids. Stats belie any increase over last half century. Ignores Mexico mass murders.
Talks of Mexico killers for power and money. Thats good? What does it take for Mexico children recruited in cartels to prove themselves by killing and beheading others? That is not crazy? Puting people alive in woodchippers and drums of acid?
I don’t contest the points you raise.
I do point out that our media is so slanted towards sensationalizing events, that often that is what people only hear about us.
I have freinds in the UK who often chide me on the events they hear from our media. So I would think that is what sets the stage for the comments quoted above..
I have vivid memories of arguing with a Kiwi (!) on line about what our gun laws are. This individual, who had never set foot in this country, informed me you could buy machine guns off the shelf and also that the Columbine shooters used Uzis. I never knew any of that! /sarc
[One of the Columbine subhumans had a Tec 9, which as far as I know does not have a full-auto version. Also I am pretty sure the safest place to be after the first round is fired is directly in front of the Tec 9 since it will have jammed.)
The author appears to subscribe to the Sandy Hook conspiracy that there was more than one shooter or is just accustomed to hyperbole. Where he gets “casually mow” is likely from watching to many movies.
“a land where deranged young men casually mow down first-graders”
Also the author Nick is struggling to create a “new” mythology with his ” act out some video-game fantasy or prove a point to their mothers.” A farcical statement.
The article is gutter tripe, it fails in quality of writing, it is almost complete hyperbole and is a fictional account based only loosely on real events. And it should be in the editorial section not World, I take that back, it should be for lining bird cages.
The Washington Post is a massive failure. It constantly showers us with a deluge of Administration propaganda on the “war” in Syria and Ukraine etc, with dubious intentions, and at the same time shows a prejudice and contempt for Mexico that is stupefying. The WP in essence ignores the murders and massacres in Mexico that have been going on for years until they can scrape up a shallow and poorly written anti-gun and anti-American gun owner propaganda piece. It is no wonder the WP is financially spiraling. What is a mystery to me is why Jeff Bezos would buy it.
I forget which radio talk host calls the WP the Washington Compost. Seems very appropriate.
As for Bezos buying the WP, my theory is that Amazon needs something to stuff into all those packages and Jeff found an endless source of scrap paper. LOL
“The Great One” (According to Limbaugh) Mark Levin.
Levin worked in the administration of President Ronald Reagan and was a chief of staff for Attorney General Edwin Meese.
The first sentence is an excellent reason why Mexicans (and Americans) SHOULD be able to arm themselves. Heck, the whole linked article is an excellent reason. I doubt it’s intentional (and there’s way too much glee at the idea of registration), but it’s there.
In other words, gun control has been an unmitigated, disastrous failure for Mexico, but LOOK AT THIS BABY!
I see the author is a fan of 1984. At least he got the bleak dystopian nightmare part right. Just remember-registration leads to confiscation. This may be the Independence Day winner. Remember the British wanted to confiscate the colonists muskets & powder. Mexicans gave up that moment long ago. It’s OK to kill for money & power ( don’t forget revenge ). This coming from a failed state & one of the most violent in the world. Keep your AK47 to yourself-you’re gonna’ need it.
Yes!
And now featuring an open border courtesy of an Obama “I cant get my way/Im the worst Pres in 70 yrs/lame duck” scorched earth policy NOW directed towards immigration law.
And Republicans do nothing with teeth to stop this and go after Obama’s Lawlessness.
Washington post agitprop.
The WaPo is a self-amplifying sound chamber. They have not one shred of a clue.
The author, Nick Mirov, is one superior moral being. He is capable of differentiating between the bad murderers in the US, who kill because they are crazy, and the good or less bad murderers, in Mexico, who only kill for money or power. Be happy you will never have to experience the twisted, sick mental gymnastics that occur inside his head.
Reading that article, I kind of wonder if the writer isn’t a closeted gun rights supporter. He’d have to be closeted to work for the WaPo, but what anti-2A lefty could even come up with the sentence “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.”? He follows it right up with a dutiful reference to how Mexicans are horrified by school shootings in the US, but the thought is clearly there.
Next up, maybe in five years or so, someone who counts in the media might realize that as similar as Americans and Mexicans are (and they are) it’s really, actually, a great comparison to see the results of “lax” gun control laws here and tight ones there. Yes, a whole country can turn into southside Chicago, or Boston, or uptown NYC, or Compton, etc.
Every society has homicidal maniacs and every society has individuals greedy for power and money and willing to kill to advance their own goals. White Americans do not have a monopoly on schizophrenia. Neither do Mexicans have a monopoly on greed and viciousness.
What we have here is the WaPo inventing a Mexican straw man who thinks, ‘well at least this isn’t as bad as America’. The murder rate in Mexico is 5 times higher than in the US and people are fleeing Mexico and central America in droves, claiming asylum because they are ‘fleeing the violence’ in their home countries. Any Mexican who actually believes the way the WaPo would have them believe are extremely uneducated.
The article leaves out the part about Mexico having a murder rate 4x that of ours. At least it ends with an account of a successful DGU, but the part about why our young men kill is sheer lunacy.
Then move to Mexico!… since killing for power/money is more noble and sensible over there.
Annex Mexico
WHY!? Then we have to deal with our problems and their problems too! They can keep their drug cartels, their restrictions on gun rights and their own whole damn nation. I hope it works out for them.
“Crazies”?
Another tip of the hat to the anti-gun gang of rights terrorists.
The “crazies” that are loose are all members of the huge criminal society that permeates Mexican, particularly those associated with the drug trade. Those “crazies” are vicious and vindictive creatures who are not afraid of anything and can only be stopped with a round to the head from one of their victims or when the government needs to demonstrate it is actually trying to suppress criminal ventures.
And these “crazies” DON’T commit suicide when confronted with resistance, so I have no clue what this WaPo writer is talking about. He actually doesn’t either, probably because his perspective is slanted anti-gun.
One thing for sure, Merino better watch that he doesn’t become to big a thorn in the side of government or cartel “crazies” (if he hasn’t already), or he too will turn up tortured and decapitated.
This article sort of leaves me stunned. The author is tripping and must have been educated at the Ministry of Truth. I am sure that most Mexicans are just appalled that deranged American young men can just order up a Glock on the Internet. Well, excuse me, I think I will just mail order a Glock and an M60 machine gun off the Internet at the Wally- World web site and have it delivered to my door step by Fed Ex. Ah yes, the M60 machine gun is advertised right next to the Candy Land games for the children. I think the illegal aliens will all now return to their respective countries knowing that Americans can order machine guns off the Internet by mail order and be delivered by Fed Ex and UPS. I know they feel safer already knowing that only the drug lords and the corrupt governments can have guns and that both groups are really just mowing down people right and left so they can be looked upon as real humanitarians helping to control and improve the flow of badly needed pharmaceutical medicines.
The author undergrad work at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley for masters …..from his bio.
Most liberal of liberal bastions.
So does the author believe his own B.S. about buying firearms anonymously online and the false equivalence in rates of random crazy shootings up here as opposed to the (apparently justified) killing for money and power down there, or is he really that clueless?
that is a really nice lookin AK
Norinco 56s. The rivets on the front trunion give it away as a Chinese gun. I love that places with no gun rights like Mexico manage to get new Chinese guns, but here in ‘the land of the free’ we cannot.
In the midst of propaganda like this, a wonderful thing happened yesterday that gave me hope.
Moms Demand Action marched in our little Fourth of July parade.
I live in Washington State, a shall-issue state for many many years I’m in a particularly screaming liberal area – the kind where all of the Democratic candidates marching in the parade get warm applause and cheers, and the Republicans?
Crickets.
So here come the Moms. In their matching T-Shirts. With their kids. Some men. Everytown signs. Maybe 30 or 40 in all. The PA announcer says who they are, their hopes for “common sense” gun laws, their aim to get a background check expansion initiative passed in the fall, etc etc….and the crowd response ?
A smattering of very weak applause from a handful of people. From the other hundreds on my particular block? A collective “meh.”
The dirty little secret is that while it’s seen as a bastion of liberal thinking, it also has a very high CPL/firearms ownership rate. And not because they feel morally superior, not because they have to be rich and influential to get a gun like in NYC. The state has been solidly shall issue for decades. The woman driving the Lotus, and the guy changing her tires, might both be carrying. If the Moms thought they would get a warm response here?
Not so much.
But I still smiled, wished them a happy Fourth as I walked by them with my wife and my mother on the sidewalk later. And, counter to The Moms’ beliefs and assumptions, my concealed Glock 26 and Ruger LCP somehow didn’t just “go off” as if possessed by demons and mow down the children.
Just out of curiosity, what town was this?
So murder for social and economic advancement, the Mexico Model, is good? How perverse and morally reprehensible…
Have to ask again, why does TTAG repeatedly post these anti 2A agitprop stories? Surely there must be more informative stories to post here, just saying….again.
I guess these idiots think that after you’ve “ordered up your Glock on the Internet” you just push the “download” button and it’s delivered directly to your PC… Well, actually, I expect they know better, but they’re playing to idiots who DO think like that…
But of course. And then you print out your new Glock on your 3D printer. Together with ammo. (I think there really are people who think this.)
Yup, just like that! Ya know, what’s really infuriating is that there are actually people with functioning brain cells that will toss off that “why, you can just buy guns on the ‘Net” crap–and if they just gave it about 2 more seconds of actual thought, they could realize that the thing still does indeed have to be delivered. And if you asked, they would know you can’t get guns thru the mail anymore. And they could go on to the next step, and understand that in order for the gun to actually be delivered there either has to be a face-to-face transfer (so goodbye complete anonymity, hello possible “sting” if you’re a prohibited person) or a transfer thru an FFL–with a background check. They could, but they won’t–because when it comes to guns, what brain cells they do have simply shut down and they go into “parrot” mode.
Actually, I’m not sure that all that many antis know firearms can’t be shipped via mail (or FedEx/UPS) to the purchaser. I think there’s a lot of ignorance among antis as to how firearm sales take place. Which of course leads to these fantasies about anonymous gun sales on Facebook and such.
This article hits every branch on the way down. They’ve already frozen comments on the WP site.
“Meanwhile, many Mexicans look north with horror and bewilderment to a land where deranged young men casually mow down first-graders, taking comfort knowing their crazies can’t just order up a Glock on the Internet. After all, people here tend to kill for power and money, not to act out some video-game fantasy or prove a point to their mothers.”
The “many Mexicans” referenced here must be the ones living in the ultra-rich enclaves in Mexico, with their own armed retainers who can protect them from the drug lords, police, federales, ….
And which internet site lets me order those Glocks? The US Justice Dept. Office of Faster and Furiouser? Hey, our government is well on the way to commonly “killing for power and money”, so this must be “progress”, right? And if the USA is such a hotbed of dangerous video-game fantasists and crazy killers, why are all of the Central American “youths” who are “escaping drug gang violence” moving right through Mexico into the US? Why don’t they stay in Mexico, with it’s leftist-dream gun laws?
Just askin’.
Meanwhile, many Mexicans look north with horror
No wonder illegal border-jumping is no longer a problem! Why, if this trend continues, the Border Patrol will be out of business.
If there really is anyone in Mexico that reflects the author’s suspiciously placed premise (that Sandy Hook situations are some kind of every-day occurrence in the US), I’d invite them to kindly STFU and examine the kind of things that are a much more common occurrence in Mexico and a direct result of their dystopian nightmare.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/mexican-cartel-leader-accused-killing-children-harvest-organs-article-1.1725522
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/24/birthday-party-massacre-ciudad-juarez
I’d listen to that guy’s narcocorridos all day long.
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