r/tacticalgear • u/StreetResolve6159 • 1d ago
Gear/Equipment Golden Minimi, nazi theme guns, and other oddities found amongst Mexico's cartels
The golden Minimi belonged to a Mayo Zambada cartel lieutenant called 'El Guero Pulseras' (eng: wristband wearing white boy).
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u/praharin 1d ago
I heard Adolph preferred a Luger 🤷♂️
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u/Automatic_Assist_295 1d ago
Holy shit they have optics now? When was this buff?
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u/StreetResolve6159 1d ago
Like Ed Calderon said in the Joe Rogan podcast. Many times the police/military take off the optics and keep them for personal use before the official picture.
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u/NewCommunication1306 1d ago
My favorite is the ak with an optics rail but no optic. The rail itself likely blocks the iron sights. Granted, I don’t think they’re too worried about aiming.
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u/EquivalentHat2457 1d ago
Where does one get a minimi gold plated?
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u/v468 1d ago
That's why I want to know, as far as I know it is a ton of work for small items nevermind a gun this big
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u/grahampositive 1d ago
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the cartels have gunsmiths that work for them
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u/v468 1d ago
Yeah but how many gunsmiths or armorers do you know that have experience with gold plating though ? Like that's fairly specialized and realistically more jewelers would have experience with it than gunsmiths
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u/Scav-STALKER 1d ago
I mean dudes do it in the US, no reason to think that papi cartel doesn’t have a dude who’s sole purpose is to bling out their gats with gold. Maybe he was a jeweler we know those guys needs someone to make gaudy jewelry anyway, but at the end of the day he does whatever the cartel wants.
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u/diprivanity 1d ago
It feels logistically challenging to us because it's not economical.
It becomes a lot more economical bordering on EZPZ when you show up to a jeweler with the gunsmith you brought at gunpoint along with your stolen 249 and bag of stolen jewelery and ask the jeweler nicely (ahem 👉) to clear his schedule for the week and make my SAW prestiged.
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u/grahampositive 1d ago
I love the braced pistol in the last picture, wouldn't want to upset the ATF amirite?
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u/Troub313 1d ago
They likely bought them in the US and snuck them across the border. Just never changed how they were configured.
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u/KedTazynski42 larperating from mom’s basement (urban RECCE) 1d ago
How do they have so many grenade launchers? Are they getting regular access to 40mms?
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u/GunMun-ee 23h ago
Mexican government. They also have people that reload their ammo and explosives.
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u/T900Kassem low speed 1d ago
Why so many AKs? With the proximity to the US, the Mexican military using M4s, and the ATF and Sig hooking them up, you'd think ARs would dominate fully
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u/hockeymaskbob 1d ago
The USSR sent crate fulls to revolutionaries in central America in the 60s, and they've slowly filtered north.
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u/NoSpawnConga 1d ago
Did they? I heard comblock was actually concerned with plausible deniability and was sending stuff from weird places and not USSR directly - f.e. East Germany made rifles and webbing. Actually one of the rarest chi com variations is East German made for sandinistas.
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u/ThesisAnonymous 1d ago
Why don’t bad guys oil their guns?
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u/larrycappija 1d ago
They barely know how their weapons work, let alone how to take apart and do maintenance to them.
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u/yung_heartburn coyote 1d ago
These guys put their gear through more 2-way range reps than 95% of this sub, guaranteed
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u/No-Speed-2866 1d ago
Mexican Hitler? For real though...why is the cartel into Hitler?
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u/cowboy_hmo 1d ago
It’s a northern Mexican thing. When I was AD, the sister troop had swastikas patches lol and it was a northern Mexican heavy troop.
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u/jcristler 1d ago
Wonder how much of that came from Eric holder and fast and furious
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u/GunMun-ee 23h ago
not many, if any. Fast and furious was a minuscule drop in the bucket. one of the biggest sources of them are the people who think truck guns are a good idea. There’s close to 400k guns stolen in this country a year that are REPORTED. Most come from vehicles. That’s a couple thousand a day, every day.
Cartel members dont buy trucks either. Most of the high end trucks stolen in the southern US go straight to mexico too
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u/jcristler 18h ago
I must be hanging out with the wrong people, but I’ve never met anyone with a 249 or a barret for a truck gun.
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u/GunMun-ee 14h ago
Those and the m203’s obviously arent coming from mom and pop shops over on this side. MAYBE the barretts. Most of those guns are walked off from military armories. They send people to go through basic training just to defect when they make it through and take half the armory with them.
Fast and furious was only like 2000 firearms.I’d be surprised if any of those were not in mass graves a couple months after it happened. the amount of credit that fast and furious gets for arming the cartel is overblown. Pretty much all of those heavy guns come from corruption from their military/police, and shops in the US selling their shit under the table. The miniguns and belt feds are dudes over here building out parts kits for them. There’s been around half a dozen dudes over the years that got caught selling the miniguns alone.
and i know it was meant to be a smartass comment, but yes, dudes will have their trucks “stolen” near the border full of these guns.
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u/Ill-Profit-6835 1d ago
Hard to believe prior administrations didn’t classify these guys as terrorists.
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u/NSA-RAPID-RESPONSE 1d ago
Just makes me think Barrett makes a killing selling the 50s to mules who just end up running them to Mexico with how prevalent they are down there.
Mexico has some of the strictest gun laws but when your neighbor has such lax laws and you have an important trade relationship it really ends up not mattering much.
Not really sure what the solution is that wouldn’t have an impact on both economies with how much it would disrupt trade.
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u/Electronic-Ad-3825 1d ago
Yeah no, American civilians aren't supplying LMGs and anti tank weapons to the cartels, their own government is.
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u/Inevitable-Sleep-907 1d ago
Their government and American government. There's many instances of American officials arming and training a smaller faction to take on a larger stronger faction in semi legitimate black ops. Also many individual agents from multiple agencies that have been arrested and charged in supplying cartel weapons. Greed and the chance of fast easy money will influence many men
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u/Little-Historian-850 1d ago
Unfortunately, things do slip through and are modified or converted.
Specifically the belt feds and Barretts
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u/NSA-RAPID-RESPONSE 1d ago
Didn’t say anything about LMGs or AT weapons in my comment
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u/Electronic-Ad-3825 1d ago
A. The majority of those pictures contain LMGs, and when you imply it's Americans giving them this shit when those are just as illegal here I'm gonna say something
B. You're never gonna guess what the cartel uses Barrett rifles for. Armored vehicles and tanks, that's what
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u/NSA-RAPID-RESPONSE 1d ago
Look, there is an established flow of weapons into Mexico. There’s several docs you can watch on the subject, and news media outlets have covered the subject in the past. I suggest you actually read unbiased fact finding sources on the matter as opposed to a random redditor. I don’t doubt corruption in Mexico contributes to the proliferation of weapons down there, but as someone who has read the material, America’s own weapons industry is a much bigger source.
Also claiming Barretts can be categorized as “AT weapons” is hilarious
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u/roostersnuffed 1d ago
Every cartel weapon post there is someone like you that is so defensive of the thought of them getting alot of those guns from the US. Why?
I can go to my local gun store and buy both a m249 and barrett this very second. Those pictures are also slap full of cheap low tier US made ARs with braces and blades that only exist because of US gun laws. They smuggle hundreds of thousands of pounds of drugs a year across the border. It would be simply convenient that they pay people with a valid US DL to buy guns in the country they are legal and smuggle them back.
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u/speezly 1d ago
Where can you buy an m249 in a gun store? I saw semi autos for sale at one point but those sold out fast
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u/Ajaws24142822 1d ago
“Minimi”? Is that what people call M249 SAWs?
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u/oga_ogbeni 1d ago
The US didn't invent that weapon nor is it the sole user. Minimi is the name given to it by its creator, the Belgian company Fabrique Nationale Herstal.
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u/Kalashnibro 1d ago
The Nazi themed stuff seems strange? But maybe they’re upset they didn’t take Germany up on the Zimmerman telegram or something? I’m guessing though someone just cooked em up cause they’re taboo and dudes just bought em and used em? Idk
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u/thepyro131 5h ago
Why do the Barretts never have optics, its not like the ran out of money after buying it.
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u/magniankh 1d ago
If Mexico could suddenly find some oil, they'd never have to worry about the cartel again.
... Because we'd invade the fuck out of them.
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u/cab0addict 16h ago
….you’ve never looked in the Gulf of Mexico then. Mexico has their own federalized oil company, PEMEX.
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u/killacarnitas1209 11h ago
Mexico has a lot of oil and we have invaded them in the past, which is why they are so protective of their sovereignty.
One of the big money makers for the cartels is actually petroleum theft.
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u/SPstandsFor 1d ago
"Nazi themed guns?" Start scrolling, "what does that even me- holy shit that's literally Hitler."