Mexican Beauty Influencer Fatally Shot in Salon During TikTok Livestream

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Mexico has tons of gun control. In fact, there's only one legal gun store in the entire country, and you need piles of paperwork before you can even set foot on the army base where the store is located.

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Their constitution says they respect gun rights, but damned if I've seen any sign of that.

And our own gun control zealots assure us that gun control works. Yet if that were true, then just why was a beauty influencer gunned down during a livestream?

 A social media influencer was shot to death while doing a TikTok livestream at a beauty salon in the central Mexican state of Jalisco, state authorities confirmed Wednesday.

The stark show of violence fueled shock in the Latin American nation at a time when rival cartels have fought bloody wars for territorial control in much of Mexico.

Valeria Márquez, 23, appeared to have been speaking to a delivery man off camera on her livestream Tuesday when she was shot once in the chest and once in the head and collapsed, dying instantly. The model and beauty influencer was inside a beauty salon in the municipality of Zapopan, the fringes of Guadalajara, when it happened.

A short time later, a former Mexican congressman was gunned down in a cafe in the same town, which is part of a region controlled by the New Generation Jalisco Cartel.

So far, there doesn't seem to be any mention of a motive, but it appears she was suspicious and concerned that someone intended to harm her a short time before the incident.

It also appears this is a professional hit. At least by some definition of "professional," anyway.

So, if gun control works, how could this happen?

"Because, idiot, guns from the United States flow into Mexico because our gun control laws are too lax," some might say.

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However, let's point out that this sort of thing isn't exactly happening here despite those supposedly lax gun control laws. While there are shootings, they're usually not so brazen, and they're typically not targeting beauty influencers who are just livestreaming. Not as a general thing.

Even the professionals don't do that, mostly because they don't want to risk being caught. They aren't going to intentionally leave evidence such as their voice on a livestreamed video. 

This means the "professional" was probably a hitter with the cartel, and they had some kind of beef with Márquez. It's possible she had a relationship with someone in the cartel, or some rival, or she just otherwise angered them somehow. Nothing seems obvious, at least as of right now as I write this.

But what is kind of obvious is, again, gun control doesn't actually stop bad people.

Had more good people in Mexico been armed, though, this horrific thing might never have happened as even the cartels would have to account for their guys getting popped by people when they try their crap.

Guns save lives. I don't care how you cut it, but they do.

Without them, TikTok influencers who live in bad areas risk being gunned down during a livestream while however many people watch it happen. That's not a way to live life.

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