Although our new Club situated between San Miguel de Allende, Gto. and Dolores Hidalgo, Gto. (think "Dolores tile") is just getting started, we already have an established "open" competition/practice program on the 3rd Saturday of every month. Based on a combination of NRA Action Pistol / PPC - type courses with a small IPSC-style sidematch, it should be a good learning experience for the many new shooters we're getting as well as lots of fun for the "usual suspects" who have been around for a while now.

In Mexico, the .38 Special revolver is King, as a civilian cannot aspire to a more powerful caliber. In automatics, the .380 is as high as you go. If you have read that in Mexico the .38 Super is legal -- well -- it was until 1974. After that, you could not buy one and anyone who had one before 1974 was "grandfathered" into only being allowed to keep it. It could not be transported to-and-from a range. So no .38 Supers in the traditional sense.

Any 9 m.m. or .38 Super auto can be "modified" to shoot the .380 Cal or Super Cal cartridge which is just a .380 casing loaded with longer 9 m.m. bullets to a length of 1.050 OAL and fired from a 9 m.m. or Super Auto with an appropriately cut chamber. From a fully-supported 1911 barrel, .38 Super factory power is quite obtainable. Use small rifle primers for that, by the way, and only a fully-supported chamber. Regular 9 m.m. power is easily done and regular small pistol primers will do.

Since Mexico only allows a maximum of 10 firearms in your possession, guns have to double-up in duty. Your Bowling Pin or IPSC gun may well have to be your PPC gun as well. Most firearms are not "over-modified". Since the regular factory-powered .380's often show up for competition, they are often horrendously under-powered and have problems knocking down Pepper Poppers set heavily enough to defy a light breeze. This quickly takes away any magazine capacity advantage they showed up with. Courses are designed with this in mind if they are more than the 6-shot only NRA or PPC-style events.

Some new and interesting guns are showing up at the Club these days. Here are two new-members' guns, a nice 6 inch Model 19 that has become a 15, and a Colt Officer's Model. I photographed them with my own Model 14 Heavy Barrel as they'll all make excellent guns for our events. I really like the grips on the Colt Officer's Model, although we'll have to find another set we can cut-up a bit to allow easier extraction of the case closest to the frame and allow for better speedloader insertion. These particular original grips are too nice to sand away on:



Crane markings on the 19/15 and my original 14, although mine doesn't show as well. But it started as a 14-4 and still is one although I ordered and got one of the over-stock Heavy Barrels when they were still around and installed it with a Read Bead sight. I like it a lot.



We shoot two classes, "Service" and "Target" class. Revolvers or Automatics with 4 inch barrels are Service Class guns. General Production firearms with longer barrels are considered Target Class guns although revolvers with fixed sights and generally unmodified from factory issue are allowed to compete as Service Class. We don't care, we're not that picky. This 4 inch Heavy Duty and 5 inch Model 10 would be equally considered to be Service Class guns.



This modified Glock 25 in .380 Cal -- tactically equivilent to a Glock 19 in power and accuracy -- is a Service Class gun:



This modified Glock 25 in .380 Cal would be considered a Target Class gun.



This 8 3/8 inch Model 19 round butt is definitely a Target Class revolver.



Cooper's rules, printed in Spanish on the range entry-building, for those people who don't want to be too far away from Cooper.



For all the NRA Action/PPC - style events, regular .38 Special ammo or .380 Factory ammo (in unmodified automatics) is good enough to come and play. For the IPSC or Pin events, only the .38 Heavy Duty round is powerful enough. Even full-bore .38 Super duplication loads in the 1911's isn't powerful enough to take the pins off reliably. Guns like this Model 27/23 with a 7-shot Baumann cylinder are built up for the "unlimited" class in Mexican Pin shooting.



For those of us who came here from Canada or the U.S. in search of perfect weather and year-long summers, the draconian Mexican gun laws have been a hinderance to continued happy shooting. But by "chipping away" at the system and taking a few short-cuts, we've made it into something that we can live with as opposed to the alternative. As we find down here in Mexico, once you give up those gun-rights, it's awful difficult to get them back.

Thanks for the update and best wishes on the continued success of your club.

I wrote a bit about Mexican Gun Laws in this thread:
International law or protocol

There are also references to Mexican Gun Laws in this thread, if you have time for reading through a rather short thread that never deviates from it's central topic. Well, just a bit.
Penultimate Pre Postwar Magnum is in Mexico!

The long answer to your question about "How hard is it to get the necessary permisos to own and shoot your guns in Mexico?" is; It depends.

- Are you Mexican? (If so, that helps a lot and will just make it hard to find a gun, any gun, which may or may not be a decent gun, and get it registered, join a Club that can actually do the paperwork and then get a permiso to take it shooting when you want.)

- We'll assume you're not Mexican, but speak pretty derned good Spanish and have lived in Mexico for more than 5 years and pretty much know the ropes. (If so, that helps a lot and will just make it derned hard to find a gun -- any gun, which may or may not be a decent gun -- and get it registered, join a Club that can actually do the paperwork and then get a permiso to take it shooting when you want.)

- Or let's assume you're an "fresh off the boat" North American or European who doesn't speak Spanish, is fairly clueless about how things work down here and you want a gun. This is the category where the vast majority of North Americans/Europeans who are looking for guns these days that I run across fall into.

No lie, no B.S.; those people are basically screwed. To paraphrase the last James Bond movie, they are basically "kites in a hurricane".

Mexico has no gun stores, except one run by the Army in Mexico City that is actually closer to a midievel torture studio moved up to the modern era. It doesn't matter how hard you try, you'll never get it right. Once you get them all the paperwork they want, then they'll want the original copy of your wife's mother's birth certificate "for their records". The answer "well that doesn't exist anymore" is not the right answer. I went throught the process when I bought my Glock from them in 2001 (a process that started in 1999) and would not wish it on anybody. Oh, well, another dream shattered. But I did get my Glock when I realized that if I couldn't come up with the documents, I had to come up with the documents. Photoshop was new then, but I'm not sure what I did would work now.

So there are no gun stores except one that won't sell to you until you've jumped through all their hoops. Good luck with that. That leaves the "Black Market". We come back to the question; how good is your Spanish? Or another question; how well do the people who sell guns down here on a regular basis know you and trust you? If the answer to the first question wasn't "real, real good" then there's almost no chance that the answer to the second question will be positive.

So there's no guns stores (that work properly) and all the guns on the Black Market are controlled by the ... well ... Black Market. You need to understand that the Mexican Gun World is a closed society. It has to be to survive, the laws are draconian and often politically interpreted. There are no Gun Shows. There is no advertising allowed, except that which is available through the Mexican Firearms Internet Websites like Mexico Armado or En la Mira. No "Want Ads" in the newspaper. No guns at garage sales (that would be a ticket to jail).

I will not waste your time telling you all the ways a person "fresh off the boat" doesn't qualify to find himself or herself a gun that's decent and get the permit for it within a calendar year. Or five. What will work would be basically, any Mexican Club is made up of about 5 - 20 "core" members who are putting on all the events and trying to build up the Club while the rest of the society around them trys to destroy it or minimalize their efforts. If you get in with them, and they decide to help you, you'll come out okay. Those are the guys (and more rarely girls) that everyone in town and the surrounding area (from Police, Military, and Rurales and Federales, etc.) know are in the Club and either don't bother them or generally don't look too closely at. They are the ones that will find you a gun if one becomes available and help you with the paperwork and legaleaze. The Club may have 200 members, but it's those "core" guys who actually pull all the weight. Anyone else is a hanger-on.

Mexico has had a rough time the last 8 years or so. Crime has been high, and even when it was fairly normal any little incidents were blown up so well by the press that it seemed a lot worse than it was. I know, I was here. I have a list on my office wall of North Americans and Europeans who are "looking for a gun". That list only grows, it never gets smaller because the simple fact is; there aren't a lot of guns around that are for sale. When one does come up, it's either an illegal caliber or a piece of garbage, generally. ANYTHING good that comes up is going to be offerred to my other friends in that "core group" that runs the Club and believe-you-me, one of them is going to buy it. Also, the guys and girls in the "core group" tend to sell guns to each-other, rarely outside the group and even if they are selling something half-desirable and nobody wants it, they'll offer it first to the "core group" of a neighbouring club. It's a closed society and it's hard to get into it.

So failing all that, for the person "straight off the boat" the only option is a Hi-Point for 1,000.00 dollars or an RG .38 Special for about 800.00 dollars (it's only missing the center-pin!). The Club guys don't buy the junk. They don't "buy and sell" the junk. You need to go ask around with the Mariachi's in the center of town, who, ever since that movie came out, some of them are selling the cheap guns nobody else would want out of guitar cases for atrocious prices. In Canada, or the U.S., the law is the law is the law. Here, there's the written law...and then there's what they're going to do with it. Throwing money at someone who can decide for-or-against you may (or may not) help. Giving him a bottle of nice Tequila on the sly would probably work better. Or showing up with someone he already knows who's willing to vouch for you would work best of all, and be the cheapest by far and probably good for cementing decent future relations. None of this is easy for the "fresh off the boaters..." and it won't become easier in the future unless the laws change. A lot. Which I don't see happening down here although it would be nice as long as they change for the better.

So I guess the short answer would have been; "No, it's not easy." Since I've done my time and gotten myself into the Mexican Shooting Community quite well, my opinion is same as the old man said at the end of The Wild Bunch; "It ain't what it used to be...but it'll do."

The matches sound like a lot of fun. I'd love to be able to shoot in them. but I'm here and they're there. Buying a pistol in Mexico sounds horrendous; a reminder of what it could be like here.

Yes, of course, if you loosen your grip at all on your rights, it will slide quickly into something like the mess we have here. So far, actually, you're doing alright up there.

Now, if you come and visit when we're having a match and you want to shoot, we'll get you a gun that's close to what you want and we'll get you the ammo. Just pay your own match fee and you're good-to-go. We have pretty neat stuff in the .380 - .38 special range of "possible options". We'll get you practice time and sight-in time. We're all shooters too and when we travel, we have to borrow so we know how it is.

What we got would include a passle of Glock 19 "reasonable facsimiles", more Browning Hi-Powers that you can shake a stick at (the Browning Hi-Power IS the IPSC/Mexico closet pistol, I do not know why except that it's easy to get the 9 m.m. barrels fabricated with .380 chambers so I suppose that's it. Yes, you need to load the .380 case to 9 m.m. specs but other than that it works just great), a few 2nd and 3rd Gen Smith 9's in .380 Cal, a fair number of 1911's in .380 Cal or .380 Super Cal .... and in revolvers, Pythons, Model 27's and 28's and 19's galore and some very few L-frames.

It would be insane to try to bring a gun. Just bring yourself. (When I go to Canada or the U.S. to shoot in a match, I don't try to take a gun. I borrow a gun from friends up there and then mooch the ammo and quite often the entry fee and the room-and-board and food and drink and then I go to the match. Then I mooch some more. If you're me, that's how you do it. If you're buying car insurance, you go to Geiko. It's that simple. I really shouldn't have to explain all this.)

Well that would surely beef up our border security & be much cheaper than a wall. Is that THE DONALD'S idea?

I should really read the thread, before making a bad joke on just the title, sorry. It's a shame you have to go thru so many restrictions & work so hard to have a shooting club. Your post made me appreciate what I have more, thank you.

No offense taken, I make a lot of bad jokes myself. I would like to point out that the strict, draconian gun regulations have NOT made Mexico a safer place nor have they made the civilian population feel more relaxed in the face of rising crime. Why on Earth legislators in other countries cannot see this and understand that there is a direct relationship between relatively easy civilian access to firearms and the relative safety of society is beyond me because all the evidence you need to see is right here.

But we do what we can with what we have all the same.

Thanks for the story and those interesting pictures. I never expected to see an 8-3/8" round-butt Model 19 .38 Special!

That was built as a sort of "all-around" Model 19. Pin Gun, Metal Chicken gun, PPC gun (we don't restrict the barrel length to 6 inches in the PPC here) and yet relatively lighter than the L and N frame guns, or the 8 inch Python. For it's purpose it certainly works, although I personally consider it to be something like Jack Nicholson's "The Joker" gun from the earlier Batman movies. A bit "over the top". But it certainly works.

After the photo of it was taken, a Weigand Interchangable Front Sight system was installed allowing it to be used with the 3 different front sight heights to allow for 100, 150 and 200 yard shooting. As I said, it's a bit over the top. The owner jokingly calls it "The Silver Menace".

Cal, thanks for making at least one little spot in Mexico a little safer...at least from those gallos de hojalata
Keep shootin',
Jim

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