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Pedro Pardo / AFP - Getty Images
A hooded armed man stands guard in downtown Tecoanapa, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, on Jan. 24.
Pedro Pardo / AFP - Getty Images
Hooded men stand guard outside the Justice palace, in Ayutla de los Libres, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, on Jan. 24.
Pedro Pardo / AFP - Getty Images
Armed men guard the Justice palace from a car, in Ayutla de los Libres, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, on Jan. 24.
Pedro Pardo / AFP - Getty Images
A female guard watches over 27 people arrested by a residents' police force in Ayutla de los Libres in the Guerrero state of Mexico on Jan. 25.
Hundreds of men and women in the southern Mexico state of Guerrero have armed themselves with rifles, pistols and machetes to defend their villages against drug gangs that local police are unable or unwilling, to stop.
"There isn't one of us who hasn't felt the pain ... of seeing them take a family member and not being able to ever get them back," said the young civilian self-defense patrol member, who identified himself as "just another representative of the people of the mountain." Continue reading Associated Press article.
Guerrero, home to the Pacific resort town of Acapulco, has been one of Mexico's hardest hit states by drug violence, which has left more than 70,000 people killed across the country since 2006.
--Getty Images, Associated Press
Pedro Pardo / AFP - Getty Images
Some of the 27 people arrested by residents of Ayutla de los Libres, who have formed their own vigilante police force, are kept under custody inside a house in Ayutla de los Libres, on Jan. 25.
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What are they going to do with their prisoners? Ransom them back to the cartels?
They should cut their heads off and leave them in the street as a warning to the street gangs.
Castration works pretty good and is very quick and simple. Just the threat of a young man losing his man hood does a lot for controlling his aggression. And he can return to his GANG ( ??? ) to tell others what will happen to them when they are caught.
Can not help but wonder if this kind of thinking is driving the gun sales here in our own country ??? Sooner or later, the public will stand up and take back our cities and streets from the gang bangers and drug lords. We already have neighborhood watch groups . So how long before they arm themselves openly ???
They do and kill freely and sometimes the wrong people, check out the Zimmerman case. Vigilante justice certainly is the last resort and for good reason.
Who is to say that some of the neighborhood watch groups aren't already armed?
I have friends who are already openly armed.
They should just hold them in jail until, there sentence is up... Mexico all transit cops work for the cartels, never trust cops in Mexico.
Dick,
George Zimmerman got the right guy.
Actually he got the wrong guy. He killed an unarmed teenager who was walking home, and he never would have confronted the kid if he didn't have a gun.
Holder got the guns from Obama.. What, they met at a gun show and passed them over?
My you have a childish, oversimplified to the point of audacious stupidity understanding of the world you live in, "If not us, Who?... If not now, When?" How about you learn more than the snippet hidelines about stories you've got your panties in a bunch about. How about you learn how things like Fast and Furious that led to guns being down in mexico cartel hands, etc. happens every day still. That was hardly a new or inventive operation. Its just one that a couple right wing nut jobs decided to spuge themselves all over trying to make it look like something wasn't happening other than the daily norm.
Not defending the daily norm, mind you. Just attacking your stupidly infantile understanding of it.
such a lovely country
Maybe some of our foreign aid to combat the drug cartels should go to these vigilantes.
Let the CIA back them. They are pretty experienced in this type of involvement.
The CIA actually are helping the Drug Cartels deliver their Product into the USA..... So they are on the Wrong side of this .......Pick some one else to help the Vigilantes................. More Power to them........When your Police are the Criminals the People have to take action to PROTECT themselves from TYRANNY!!!..................Thank god in the USA we have the 2ND AMENDMENT to keep our Corrupt Public Officials in check so that they do not become TYRANNICAL!!! (and they are trying)..............Go after the CRIMES and not our GUNS!!!
CHICAGO, take notice, it can be done. Except you don't need to take prisoners, just leave the gangbangers where their fellow bangers can find them. Pile enough of them up, they might get the message and move out. Those extra 200 cops aren't going to solve a thing.
I thought it was illegal to own guns in Mexico? But it seems criminals have most of the guns in Mexico.
Actually it is illegal to carry a gun in public in Mexico,
Article 10: The inhabitants of the United Mexican States have the right keep to arms in their homes, for security and legitimate defense, with the exception of those prohibited by federal law and those reserved for the exclusive use of the Army, Navy, Air Force and National Guard. Federal law will determine the cases, conditions, requirements, and places in which the carrying of arms will be authorized to the inhabitants.
Sally Ann 4595694
Great Post!
The only thing those extra 200 Chicago PD are going to do ismunch more donuts on the street. Buy stock in Dunkin Donuts and watch it rise dramatically in Chaicago land.
Hmmm. Govt. stimulus for the donut industry for sure, lol. But of course, if they don't hire the extra 200 cops, then we can blame them for not supporting law enforcement. Guess can't please anybody except the critics with this move. :P
Ya, thats an answer that sounds exactly like a civilized country I want to live in.. Bodies piled in the street, no due process, ppl completely out of control.
You guys act like the small amount of crime in concentrated sectors of your country are at some type of epidemic level. Tell you what, as soon as we have the equivalent per capita her in America of what they have going on down in Mexico, I'll be the first to join up. THat is how far fetched and far from reality what you propose is.
Its all fun to be a simple child and see the answer to problems as essentially doing the same thing to to solve that problem that CAUSED the problem, but really... please... Have so many of you Americans really become this rotten, childish, stupid and naive now?
Yeah. Life is cheap to them. Probably a lot of those "vigilantes" are chasing themselves. And what's worse is these are the very people that become illegal workers here in our country. Are these thekind of people we need here taking what's left of our jobs? They will kill and rape and move on to the next town. Maybe we need some citizens groups here to enforce our own laws. Our government's not doing it. Our elite don't care how many murderers and rapists are here illegally as long as they help to break the back of our once strong, now weakened working class. Remember:Hiring illegal workers helps to create anexcess pool of labor, suppresses wages, allows poor working conditions and afear based job environment, enriches the illegal worker's country of origin,diminishes our economy and our standard of living, makes the rich richer, thepoor poorer, and increases the gap between the 99% and the 1%. Don't believethey are only doing the jobs we won't do. We are Americans. We will do any job.
In Mexico it is illegal to possess the firepower to defend oneself against criminals which is why these people are vigilantes and why the country is run by gangsters
It shows what lengths people who care about their friends and family will go to protect them. Take a lesson USA. The people these good citizens have had to fight to regain their freedom and safety from are the same people crossing our border illegally daily. Many of these criminals are the ones our government will soon be granting amnesty. I wouldn't rush out & get rid of my [incorrectly named] assault weapons just yet.
Actually, it's not because of the legality of who can own what kind of guns, it's all about the money. Drug gangs have all that money flowing from the USA, the citizens are poor. Who do you think can afford those illegal guns?
Wallace J... who in the world is even proposes anything to do with any of your "correctly or incorrectly named" assault weapons?
What the hell does that have to do with anything? No one proposing such a thing. Its like Pavlov's dogs with ppl like you. The bell is rung and you're suddenly ideating having to protected the unlawfal seizure of your guns.
No one is asking for that you ninnies.
To Thomas Jefferson above.... over doing it as well. "Illegal to posses the firepower needed to protect oneself from criminals".
Here's the thing. What makes a person a criminal is subjective. You make that statement as though the only thing that can protect oneself from criminals IS a firearm, and that protection is being intentionally kept from people because there is some kind of sinister plot to keep innocent people subjected to these criminals... by keeping from them the only thing with which they can protect themself.
Let me tell you what generally happens when you are being help up at gunpoint and you decide to go cowboy and shoot the "bag guys". The bad guys shoot you, kick you over, and move on. Grow up, John Wayne wannabee.
This is what happens when people are either mad enough or scared enough. Inept, corrupt or over bearing government will push people to find their own solutions to deal with their problems. When the laws will no longer protect you from violence and the government is not doing its job,there comes time when the people have no other option but to protect themselves. If people in the cities around the US want to see the results of a disarmed and helpless population, take a good look to the south of the border. Now, those who only want to sleep at night without worrying that the criminals kill them or their loved ones, just became criminals themselves to protect their homes and families.
A perfect example of how the law is not necessarily moral. Sometimes doing what is morally right involves breaking the law.
You make great points... BUt i do have to take issue with the way you compare the folks "south of teh border" to us up here and make the implication that we will soon be bereft of our right to bear arms... at all.
That is not the case. So why, tell me please, as you do seem reasonable and thoughtful... Why do people like you still continue to throw that irrelevent comment in? Why is the way America would look if its citizenry lost the right to bear arms even a topic of conversation. Gun control even in its very most extreme forms when applied in America does not seek to keep people from the right to bear arms. It does apply some rationale (whether you agree with it or not... I personally don't, but some people do think stemming the tide of assault weapons and large ammunition clips will have some kind of effect... if so, how on earth could it ever be measured anyhow?) to how one regulates what is and isn't legal with firearms. Just like the way laws work out to designate what training one must go through for a CC permit, how and when you can legally defend yourself with deadly force... etc. THose are all "controls".
There are some people who are allowing their perspective of this whole thing and some of the proposed changes to be colored and pre-packaged in such a way that their beliefs hardly reflect anything actually realistically happening. Why are you so eager to buy into horse@!$%# designed to rile you up?
Hey, chipsalom, I'll bet your a Mexican or a shill for illegals. Well, I lived there for 15 years, 10 of them straight in a row, and I can tell you the saying "never trust a Mexican' is something visitors learn to believe.
Good for them! Thats the way to do it if the police are unwilling to help!
Ohhhhh, what a tough looking GANG! what are they, "the Plaid Lads" or "Los Madras Amigos"? The 2 in back look like they are part of the notorius "Grandpa Gangstas" mob! Do they just not steal enough to buy anything but Goodwill hand-me-downs? And oddly enough there isn't a single tattoo among them? And what the he!! are they going to do with them, now that they caught them?
Aren't sex slavery cults illegal in Mexico? And yet people still start sex slavery cults. Might as well just make sex slavery cults legal. That way everyone can protect themselves with their own sex slavery cult.
Mexico needs strict gun control to battle these terrified, victimized law abiding citizens;
Obama needs to have another Fast & Furious program to send fully automatic assault weapons to the Drug Gangs, as part of his Standing up for the Little Guy.
Hey wait a minute....
The only way to sleep soundly at night is with a gun under your pillow — in any country. To make the point clear for Obama, take the firearms away from his body guards and issue them baseball bats.
Yep. Or they could give really great advice like my Kollege Kampus Kops: "Scream loudly and try to run away". But the priviledged class in DC will always put clauses in the laws they pass to exempt themselves from the restrictions they put on us.
Until you have a night of heavy drinking and someone pisses you off. Or until you have a very talented cat burglar who shoots you first.
The belief that having a gun under your pillows gives you "safety" is horse@!$%# dude. Its like saying that owning a car allows you to use the freeway safely. It itself is a danger, yet also a tool. WHen properly handled, it has uses, but can also be mishandled to deadly results.
DOn't be such a tool yourself. You're more likely to accidentally pull the trigger of your gun under your pillow and blow your ear off than you are to ever actually need to use said gun in a break in situation.
this could be our future. The bad guys have better guns. i salute them. standing up out gunned. gov. not on your side. dam i guess its not so bad here yet.....we could be very well heading there on the path we are on.
Finally, a story about Mexico policing themselves and making their country worth living in (in time) for once.
Its just another example that laws and regulations are subjective. You do realisze that thse people you laud are, themselves, now considered criminals, right? Apply that same logic to the laws which create criminals of the people these "citizens" are fighting against.
I am a firm believer in ppl standing up for themself. I believe in gun rights, but think that anyone who wants a completely unregulated free gun market in America is a whack job with no actual causal thinking ability or ability to connect the dots of cause and effect.
That being said, I support any "vigalante" standing up to protect their family and way of life, but know full well that many of you folks who are lauding them are the same ppl who are calling that very same person a criminal simple for walking 1 mile over an imaginary border.
Is there any way I can get the chick in the black tank top to guard me?
No, I got dibs on her! Plus, she might be my wife's type!
I can see it now. The cover of the April issue of Playboy:
Vigilante Women of Mexico... they bear arms and now, they bare all.
I'm kind of disappointed. I was hoping the vigiliantes would be dressed up like the colorful Mexican wrestlers (lucha libre).
There always has to be the commentary from the ignorant bigots. Does your mother even know you are on the computer, or is she earning her two bits working on her back right now. Today two black women were gunned down right off the interstate in Chicago, police say it is a gangland shooting. I live north in Milwaukee where 80% of the murders will be in one neigbor hood. Not mine, I pay a lot of taxes so my nice neighborhood is just fine. The minorities, mainly blacks, are going to have to quit being victims and take their own streets back. Force the men to be men and take care of their kids or the slaughter will continue because as long as the killing stays in your neighborhoods the rest of us are OK with it. Colorado, Conn. etc. just piss off people cause it is little white kids getting killed.
Corruption and criminals coming to town near you...don't worry after the democrats take your guns they will protect you....just remember they and celebrities, movie stars, sports figures, news people will have hired guns to protect them.
If that's what it takes good for them. America should take lessons.
And the Indian women are being given knives. See what it takes to combat the violence? Weapons in the hands of the good guys. What part of this dont the gun grabbers get? Oh and there was a little piece in the newspaper about how many kids had died in the past week. Check out the cities. All but one of them that I can tell have the most restrictive gun laws in the country. The fool that wrote the article probably thought he was showing the danger of guns but in fact they made a great case of how more gun control equals more violence. I am sure the irony was lost on them.
Irony lost on them. I think they know the truth but have a political agenda and are being paid to promote it. Propaganda and journalism has always been the reason why a thinking person does not allow themselves to be swayed by the propaganda. Civilians with guns are citizens civilians without guns are subjects. History has proved this concept of subjugation through the disarmament of its citizens.. The criminals will always be able to get weapons which they will use against honest people. Honest people need the means to defend themselves against criminals on the street or in the government.
I don't think it fair to call these people vigilantes given that their governments have failed them. I think the estimate of 70,000 deaths due to gangs since 2006 is ample justification for citizens to finally put a stop to the gangs thinking they can do anything without consequence.
The problem is that the civilian army (vigilantes) are not yet as tough as the killers they are defending themselves against, as evidenced by the fact they are holding them prisoner.
If they could turn these people over to their law enforcement and be assured their justice system would prosecute them properly, it would be okay, but that is not the case. Their law enforcement and their justice system are both corrupt and in the pay of the criminals they are defending themselves against.
If they want to be effective, they will have to get to the point where they steel themselves to kill outright those who come against them. It's the only way. Otherwise, when released, these men will return for revenge.
Thank God The US government tightened our southern borders immeadiately after 911!. I feel soooo much safer!
Good for them, but it would be even better if they resorted to the type of justice seen in some Asian countries, where the death penalty is given for drug trafficking.
I wish there was a way for me to aid them; maybe send them money to get better guns, armor, etc...
Did you notice the rifle that was sticking out of the car window. A .22 cal with a tube magizine. When he comes up against a group of hoodlums with AKs, I hope he is REAL good shot.
Lazarus