Tony Canales looks at two very different reactions to firearms; specifically “assault” weapons. There’s the panty-wetting reaction of people like Kevin de Leon and then there’s the reaction of many people throughout Mexico. To de Leon, they’re scary pieces of metal that lurk around dark alleys and school playgrounds. To the otherwise law abiding citizens of Mexico in villages overrun by drug cartels and corrupt officials, they’re valuable tools for defending their liberties and their lives…
Much has been made on the subject of the regulation of gun ownership, both here in the United States and in Mexico. Of special controversy is the subject of small arms being smuggled south, and what is being done with them once they get across the border.
In the video above, journalists note that the local citizens of Ayutla have for over a year taken up unregistered firearms to protect themselves and their property from drug cartels and, implicitly, corrupt police officials.
Senator Kevin de Leon, (D-Los Angeles), whose district boundaries are based more on a design theory from Rorschach than anything rational, is proposing that solid blocks of metal be considered to be firearms in the eyes of the law (ie billets for lowers, among other components.).
Compare and contrast.
On the one hand, you have people who just want to live and work in peace. They see guns as tools they’ve been forced to buy to achieve that goal. I’m sure that each of them can think of some other way they’d have rather spent that money. But we all have tools in our garages that we didn’t really want to buy. We had to buy them. The same is true of people like the residents of Ayutla. They have guns they needed, not guns they wanted.
Now on the other hand, you have people like Kevin de Leon. This is nothing in his reaction that cannot be summed up in two words: Irrational fear. If someone wanted to use their phobia of Nyan Cat to write a law, they’d be hauled off by the nice, young men in their clean, white coats. But no one says anything when someone like de Leon wants to write a law based on his fear of a block of 7075 Aluminum. And Mr. de Leon is so frightened of that piece of metal that he’s wants to keep it away from you, me, and people here who face violence like our neighbors in Ayutla face.
I’m not sure which scares him more: An 80% lower or a single mom with a semi-auto rifle defending her children from some neighborhood thug.
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