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Narco-Blogger Beats Mexico Drug War News Blackout
An anonymous reader writes "An anonymous, twentysomething blogger is giving Mexicans what they can't get elsewhere — an inside view of their country's raging drug war. Operating from behind a thick curtain of computer security, Blog del Narco in less than six months has become Mexico's go-to Internet site at a time when mainstream media are feeling pressure and threats to stay away from the story. Many postings, including warnings and a beheading, appear to come directly from drug traffickers. Others depict crime scenes accessible only to military or police."
I hope the "second ammendment remedies" crowd is proud.
Where do you think the guns that fuel this bloodbath are coming from??
The guns that fuel Mexico's bloody drug war come from the United States of America, where we are apparently just a little too dumb for sensible gun control. I guess you never know when you will need an M-16 with a large clip to take down your own country's elected government. Nevermined the consequences or the fact that you would be dead before you even reloaded your weapon.
I'm a mexican living in Mexico. I won't go as far as saying that it is hell on earth, but it is getting pretty gruesome. And that's just from what you hear on the news!
Then I started diggin in alternate sources, such as blog del narco, and damn, was I missing out on all the news!
Just recently I bumped into this story about Ciudad Juarez. The story both gives hope and scares the crap out of you. No sign of that story on the two most widely spread newspapers in Mexico, though. They're just sweeping it under the rug.
I wonder if blog del narco featured it...
Legalize it all damn ready. Seriously, executive order, make it happen.
It's really quite sad that the world learned nothing from the US' futile attempt to outlaw alcohol in the 1920's. No one is saying drugs are good. They are quite bad, but making them illegal makes them much, much worse. I wish politicians didn't care about looking "soft on crime" in dealing with the drug war, and they could actually push to try to overturn this quixotic war. Make them legal and undercut the illegal drug trade which is fueled by their artificially inflated illegal prices. We saw all the same stuff during alcohol prohibition. The extreme corruption, the gang wars, the bad moonshine that made people go permanently blind, people using/selling more potent forms because it's easier to transport. It's all avoidable, but no one will push the issue because they're instantly shot down for being "soft on drugs"
I die a little inside every time I hear a story about drug gangs basically taking over cities in Mexico and kidnapping people. Think of the people women whose husbands have been kidnapped and they receive pieces of them with ransom notes asking for money that they don't have. This is what could've happened if they kept up alcohol prohibition. Drug prohibition is just as ill-conceived. The better we do reducing supply, the higher the prices go, and the more vicious the drug gangs get in protecting their business.
It's a terrible cycle, and one that can only be broken by regulation. They need to make drugs legal through special outlets stocked with health care workers, where people can safely obtain their drugs and use the proceeds to pay for the addiction specialists and treatment centers. There's nothing we can do except address the problem of addiction, and treat such users as patients, not criminals. Is it perfect? Probably not, but it's a start.
I'll never understand why anyone even humors positions like prohibition and gun control. We've tried both for a long time now, more than long enough to iron out any implementation errors. They simply don't work. Acknowledge that and maybe we can come up with something that might work.
Prohibition didn't work, but we still regulate alcohol. Drunk driving, drinking age, liquor licenses, and more. Disarming the citizenry is a bad idea, but that doesn't mean guns can't be regulated.
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Because he occupies an interesting space where both the police and the drug cartels are using him as a front for their media outreach campaign. As long as he's useful to both sides, and not too much of an annoyance, he'll be played by both.
I wonder how traceable a gun with no serial number is.
I assume that it's standard procedure to remove the gun's serial number In order to protect the gun purchaser in the United States.
How many of the guns in your biased article's survey have serial numbers?? Oh wait, your sources are shills for the weapon manufacturers and the NRA. And you believe it cuz you like guns. Good for you.
American guns are causing an epic bloodbath in Mexico. Not just assault rifles that can easily be converted to full automatic. Handguns are also flooding accross the border from the United States.
The NRA has blood on it's hands, and the people who instinctively oppose serious gun control should think about how much blood is being spilled by American guns.
Even if your phoney statistics were based in reality, almost every gun used to kill an American in the United States was purchased legally at some point.
No, but I know many people who have a gun "for self defense" who live in rural areas with nearly no, or no violent crime rate other than domestic violence which is actually made worse by gun ownership. They aren't out shooting innocent people. But they are living in a form of fear.
We don't lock our doors. the cops occasionally have something to do in our area, but it's rare. Living life in preparation for an exceedingly unlikely event is paranoia. Paranoia may increase survivability for a very small number of people for whom the very unlikely becomes a reality, but if you aren't one of them, it makes your life worse.
Watching the news makes us americans paranoid. I live in maine and the few violent crimes we do have get plenty of airplay. You'd think it was common if you just watched the news and didn't think too deeply. It's easy to forget that the stories we are hearing are ALL of them, and there are a lot of people in this state who have never even heard a gunshot fired other than during hunting season or target practice.
The fantasy the OP was referring to was the fantasy that most of us outside of major metro areas are ever, ever, ever going to want or need a gun for defense. Within major metro areas, it would be easier and better to call a cop and run.