A SELF-REGULATED MILITIA, BEING NECESSARY . . . “If the government doesn’t back us, we must do what we can”: Mexican Citizens Create Private Forces to Fight Cartels. “In the face of kidnappings and extortion from cartels and a lack of reliable protection from the police and military, groups of Mexican citizens are taking matters (and weapons) into their own hands and protecting themselves. . . . Mexico has extremely strict private gun ownership laws, which is why part of the news coverage seems focused on ‘disarming’ the vigilantes. That the military is unable to even disarm its own law-abiding citizenry (other than the gun laws anyway), and that armed citizens appear to be a better choice to keep cartels at bay (they actually have a stake in the outcome) may indicate an important shift for Mexicans in fighting the violence in their country. The New York Times frets these vigilante leaders may have ties to other criminal gangs, but there’s little to indicate in either their story nor Fusion’s that they are victimizing these communities further or worse than what they had been living under.”

UPDATE: From the comments: “Finally, a group in Mexico the Obama administration will not sell guns to.”