I noticed you replied to me twice (once here and once in another subthread), saying you'd spent time looking and "wasted [your] life". You also seem to be going further down the road of ad-hominem, describing the author of the first article I wrote as an "NRA spokesman". You seem ideologically driven and therefore unlikely to listen. But here goes anyway:

"Vigilante Mobilization and Local Order: Evidence from Mexico"

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/522fc0aee4b06bf96fa60...

> Our empirical approach traces the sources of recent self-defense groups to the early twentieth cen- tury Cristero rebellion and, using an instrumental variables approach, we show that contemporary community mobilization has succeeded in reducing a broad range of crimes.

Also I note that you're pushing back against my statement regarding things being swept under the rug (e.g., your statements about "somehow" this making it to the news). Did you also notice that the link to this article is gone from the HN front page? My intuition is that the public in general is going to turn a blind eye to this topic, until they can't any more (that's usually when something really bad happens). Note again that I am very unhappy with that idea and wish it were not so, but it strikes me as unfortunately very likely. I'd love to be wrong, but I see nothing to indicate otherwise. There is always hope I suppose.