Mayor Jose Eligio Medina Rios: Give Guns To Public To Fight Mexico's Drug Cartels

As U.S. politicians like Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne float proposals to arm public school administrators, a small town politician in Mexico is pushing a similar debate.

José Eligio Medina Ríos, mayor of the municipality of Concordia in the violence-plagued state of Sinaloa, asked the federal and state governments to help arm people living in the mountains in order to protect themselves from criminal gangs, Excelsior reported over the weekend.

The mayor made the request after nine people were killed on Dec. 24 in the town of El Platanar de Los Ontiveros, reportedly by a group of 30 people dressed in military clothing.

“It’s impossible to have a police officer or a soldier in every house,” Medina Ríos said, according to Excelsior.

The distraught mayor isn’t likely to get his wish.

“This declaration is clearly not approved by the state government, which sees this proposal as illogical and counterproductive,” the subsecretary of Sinaloa state Marcial Liparoli said, according to Noroeste. “Violence generates more violence.”

The idea of arming civilians to protect people from violent criminals who enter school grounds was recently advanced by the National Rifle Association in response to the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said earlier this month.