Mexico has “restrictive” gun control — including comprehensive background checks — and a homicide rate over five times higher than the rate in the U.S.
According to the University of Sydney’s Gun Policy center, Mexico has “restrictive” gun controls. And while there is “a right to private gun ownership” in Mexico, it rests on a “conditional guarantee” that can “limited by statute law.” Such law means Mexican citizens are limited to owning rifles of .30 caliber and smaller, revolvers of .38 caliber and smaller, and semiautomatics of 9mm and smaller.
There are also all-out bans on entire categories of firearms.
Gun Policy reports:
Civilians are not allowed to possess weapons of war, including automatic firearms, sub-machine guns, machine guns, .357 Magnum revolvers and those greater than .38 calibre, handguns greater than 9mm, rifles and carbines of .223, 7mm, 7.62 and .30 calibres, or shotguns with barrels shorter than 635mm or greater than 12 gauge.
Moreover, CBS News reports that the background check process for guns that are legal in Mexico includes a requirement for six pieces of documentation:
A birth certificate, a letter confirming employment, proof of a clean criminal record from the attorney general’s office in the applicant’s home state, a utility bill with current address, a copy of a government-issued ID and a federal social security number.
On top of this, Mexican citizens are limited to “one handgun for home protection, while members of hunting or shooting clubs can acquire up to nine rifles of no more than .30 caliber and shotguns up to 12 gauge.”
Again, Mexico has all-out ban on complete categories of firearms, strict limitations on the number and caliber of legal arms citizens can own, comprehensive background checks, and further limits on firearm possession that are based on the declared purposes of the firearms. Yet much as the gun control experiment in Chicago has proven, the gun control schema in Mexico is correlating with rampant violent crime rather than a reduction in such crime. In fact, Mexico’s homicide rate is “more than five times higher” that the homicide rate in the U.S., where guns are easier to acquire and easier to carry daily for self-defense.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.