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Maria Susan Flores Gamez was born in 1992 and raised in Guamuchil, Mexico. An attractive, doe-eyed lass, Maria won the 2012 Woman of Sinaloa beauty pageant. At that time Flores Gamez was also taking media classes at her local university. By 2009 she had been modeling professionally and participating in beauty pageants for three years.
In June of 2012 Maria competed in the Our Beauty Sinaloa pageant but did not place. The Our Beauty Sinaloa winner goes on to compete in the Miss Mexico pageant. From there, Miss Mexico represents the country at the Miss Universe competition.
While all that is obviously terribly important to the participants, such stuff has never done much for me. It always struck me as a bit exploitative. I like pretty girls more than most, but in the Information Age it surprises me that the woke warriors of the world will tolerate women prancing about mostly naked being overtly judged on the strength of their fleshly attributes. In the case of Maria Susan Flores Gamez, however, vapid beauty pageants were the least of her worries. Along the way Maria met some seriously sketchy guys.
The Sinaloa state in northern Mexico is home to one of the world’s most powerful drug cartels. Also known as the Guzman-Loera Organization, the Pacific Cartel, the Federation, or the Blood Alliance, the Sinaloa Cartel was founded in 1987 and maintains a presence in 22 of the 31 Mexican states. The mass of illegal drugs smuggled into the United States by the Sinaloa Cartel is measured in tons. This means money, lots and lots of money.
The Scope
It’s really tough for normal folks to appreciate how massive this illicit enterprise actually is. To paraphrase JK Simmons in the superb action flick The Accountant, these guys count their money using truck scales. The Sinaloa Cartel is responsible for roughly a quarter of the drugs that are smuggled into the United States from Mexico. Conservatively estimated, their annual income hovers around $3 billion.
The Sinaloa Cartel was helmed for years by the infamous Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. He was, for a time, on the Forbes list of billionaires. These drug lords are some of the most powerful men on earth. There is literally nothing they cannot buy. However, the one thing they all genuinely fear is the American supermax prison.
After several arrests and high-profile escapes from Mexican custody, El Chapo was extradited to the United States. In November of 2019 his trial began on charges ranging from weapons possession to homicide. In July of 2019 he was convicted of all 17 counts lodged against him. El Chapo was sentenced to life in prison plus another 30 years. He was also ordered to forfeit some $12.6 billion. As of this writing, El Chapo is tucked away in ADX Florence, the most secure supermax facility in the country. So long as his cellmate doesn’t beat him to death first, El Chapo will undoubtedly breathe his last while incarcerated there.
Command of the Sinaloa Cartel has passed through several individuals, but it yet remains a major player in the Mexican drug trade. While drugs, guns, and opulence are part and parcel of this incredibly dangerous profession, another common thread is beautiful women. Guzman had at least four wives and at least eleven children. It was her innate beauty that earned Maria Susan Flores Gamez a position with the Sinaloan gangsters.
The Background
Certain parts of northern Mexico are legitimate battlefields. Drug gangs with essentially unlimited funding field armies of paid sicarios armed with the finest military hardware money can buy. That means belt-fed machineguns, antitank weapons, .50-caliber sniper rigs, and assault rifles and submachine guns aplenty.
35,000 Mexicans were murdered in 2019. Between 2000 and 2013, 215,000 people were killed there. That puts the annual murder rate at around 25 per 100,000 people. That means that one in every 4,000 Mexicans is murdered every annum. To put that in perspective, we lost 58,000 American troops in ten years of active combat in Vietnam.
Mexico actually has some profoundly restrictive gun control laws. I’m told there is only one commercial gun shop in the country, and that is run by the government. Legally obtaining the means to defend oneself in modern-day Mexico is essentially unobtainable for the typical Mexican. How then might we explain the fact that guns are so prevalent and human life so cheap in a place with such restrictive gun control legislation? It seems that Mexican criminals choose not to obey the law. That alongside the fact that the sun reliably comes up in the east battle for the title of Most Obvious Thing in the Universe.
The Hit
On this fateful day, Maria was a passenger in one of six vehicles making up a convoy of Sinaloa Cartel operators. Mexican Army soldiers got wind of the convoy and moved in. There resulted an hours-long running gun battle.
Mexican troops eventually isolated the cartel shooters outside a safe house in Mocorito. Maria emerged from the SUV wielding an AK rifle and followed by drug cartel shooters. After a vigorous exchange of fire, the soldiers ultimately prevailed. Lamentably, that is not always the case. In the aftermath of the firefight Maria’s bullet-riddled body was found outside one of the vehicles alongside her Kalashnikov.
The Guns
We have reviewed the Kalashnikov rifle in this venue before. This time I thought we might focus on the unique milieu of weapons in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. These guns come from a variety of sources.
Much hay has obviously been made over guns procured on the US civilian market and smuggled south into Mexico for use by the cartels. This is not an unreasonable concern. We Americans currently possess some 440 million firearms. That’s twenty times as many guns as there are soldiers in all the world’s combined armies. Were I looking to equip a private army, here’s where I’d start. However, to fixate on American guns smuggled south is to lose all-important context.
Mexican drug cartels have as much money as some small nation states. They have a literal global reach in sourcing illicit narcotics for sale in the US. They have access to any weapons in the world. Many parts of the planet are awash in military hardware provided by the superpowers during decades of open proxy warfare. It would be tough to get excited about a no-frills Anderson Arms semiautomatic AR15 when El Salvador, Panama, Nicaragua, or a dozen different African nations stand by to supply as much legit military-grade ordnance as you can move.
While weapons sourced in the US are obviously semiautomatic, that really doesn’t make any difference. Anybody with a rudimentary milling machine or, in some cases, a 3D printer can convert most common semiautomatic weapons to full auto. Regardless, the addition of a happy switch to your typical AR or AK rifle is little more than a liability. Real soldiers use fully automatic fire from handheld small arms rarely if ever. The calculus changes with belt-fed support guns, but long bursts of full auto fire launched from assault rifles are found most commonly in the hands of movie stars and amateurs.
No discussion of this sort would be complete without mention of the Obama-era Operation Fast and Furious. Orchestrated out of the Tucson and Phoenix BATF offices and running from 2006 through 2011, Fast and Furious encouraged licensed American gun dealers to sell weapons to straw buyers with the full understanding that these guns would end up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Fast and Furious guns were ultimately recovered from dozens of crime scenes. One Fast and Furious AK was used to murder US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in 2010. Mexican officials tied Fast and Furious weapons to at least 150 deaths. Of the 2,000 or so weapons the Obama administration fed to the cartels, only 710 had been recovered by 2012.
Fast and Furious was obviously intended to provide media fodder to establish a connection between the American civilian gun industry and Mexican drug cartels. Equipped with such inflammatory information Democrats undoubtedly hoped to be able to push through fresh new gun control initiatives. Amidst a pantheon of breathtakingly stupid things the US government has done through the years, Fast and Furious is arguably the stupidest.
The Rest of the Story
Maria Gamez was not the first Mexican beauty queen to get caught up in cartel violence. However, she was the first to which I could find reference who was killed in action. Powerful criminals always seem to surround themselves with pretty girls. It has become a trope in movies.
The former Miss Sinaloa Laura Zuniga lost her 2008 crown from the Hispanoamerican Queen pageant after being arrested for drug and weapons violations. Zuniga was later released without being charged. Another model and prominent pageant participant was arrested in 2011 alongside a known drug runner and murder suspect, but she also was released.
The allure of easy money and easier power reliably brings out the worst in people. Javier Valdez, the author of Miss Narco, a book about the ties between beauty pageants and the Mexican drug cartels, said, “For a lot of these young women, it is easy to get involved with organized crime, in a country that doesn’t offer many opportunities for young people. They are disposable objects, the lowest link in the chain of criminal organizations, the young men recruited as gunmen and the pretty young women who are tossed away in two or three years, or are turned into police or killed.”
I first laid eyes on the Beretta 92X Performance at the 2019 NRA Annual Meetings conference in Indianapolis, IN. It was a featured attraction at the Beretta booth, and as a self-confessed Beretta enthusiast, I could not wait to see it in-person. There are two reasons why the 92X Performance’s launch was significant. First, before the pistol’s arrival Beretta 92 pistols with all-steel construction and frame-mounted safeties were rarities or extremely limited-release items that only seemingly changed hands between serious collectors. The 92X Performance’s release curtailed this phenomenon, as these new pistols are easier to source and retailed for less money.
The second reason is that these guns are outfitted to go directly from the gun shop to a match like a USPSA or IPSC event. Beretta also started shipping an IDPA-legal variant of this pistol called the 92X Performance Defensive in late 2021. In the past, Beretta built pistols like the 92 Stock or 92 Combat for IPSC competition. However, these models are also extremely rare, coveted and hard to find. The Stock or Combat versions were only released intermittently, and production numbers were low, unlike these new competition pistols.
The heavier all-steel construction of the 92X is great for absorbing felt recoil, especially in the context of competitive shooting. The Beretta Brigadier slide was originally fielded on Beretta 96, chambered in .40 S&W. The slide was meant to reduce felt recoil and increase reliability by keeping extra material around the slide’s critical areas. Beretta 92 pistols with Brigadier slides are sought both by serious collectors and shooters.
Shooters love them because these slides are cut with front and rear sight dovetails, allowing sights to be swapped out. Collectors favor them for their exclusivity and rarity. Compared to a standard frame, the 92X Performance frame features an internally beveled magazine well. Reloading and inserting mags is subtly easier with this pistol.
The 92X Performance has an excellent sight picture, which is one of my favorite aspects about this pistol. Picking up steel plates, poppers and paper targets is quite easy with the red fiber-optic front sight and the horizontally serrated LPA rear sight, which is fully adjustable for windage and elevation and has a generous wide square notch. Though the 92X Performance is a traditional double-action pistol, it comes with ambidextrous oversized “competition” style frame-mounted thumb safeties, not the standard slide-mounted safety/decocker found on most Beretta 92s.
However, this pistol must be manually decocked by carefully and deliberately pinching the hammer with the thumb and index finger and holding it tightly until the hammer rests against the back of the slide. This can get tricky, but it is important as decocking is required in certain divisions in the action shooting sports. The takedown lever on the left side of the frame has an extended ledge (aka a “gas pedal”) where right-handed shooters can rest their left thumb for a little more recoil control. 92X Performance barrels come in the traditional Beretta 92 profile and length of 4.9 inches. The pistol includes a steel guide rod, adding mass towards the front of the frame helping to mitigate muzzle flip.
The 92X Performance’s “Xtreme-S” trigger system is optimized for competition from the factory. All “Xtreme-S” critical trigger components have a diamond-like coating that reduces friction and protects parts from wear. The trigger itself has vertical grooves reminiscent of Smith & Wesson wide revolver target triggers of old, and the trigger is adjustable for overtravel. The first time I dry-fired this gun, both its double and single action pulls were noticeably smoother compared to a stock Beretta 92 trigger.
The pistol also has a Beretta Elite 2 skeletonized hammer and a competition-weight mainspring. Like the Brigadier slide, the Elite 2 hammer is a Beretta 92 icon and somewhat of a status symbol, which is why these hammers are commonly found on specialized Beretta 92 models. Similarly, the oversized magazine catch found on the 92X Performance pistol originates from the Beretta 92 Billenium, another highly coveted and collectible all-steel model. The Billenium style mag catch works very well and its inclusion as a standard part in the 92X Performance is a great idea.
I have been shooting my personally owned 92X Performance since late 2020. Though the “Xtreme-S” system is touted for competition use, I find the pistol’s ignition system to be wholly reliable after shooting a myriad of factory 9mm options in addition to my own handloads that are loaded with primers of varying hardness. I have shot my pistol at several USPSA matches, various range trips and one high-round count weekend training class. At this point, I estimate that I have probably fired over 3,000 rounds of handloads and factory ammo. The 92X Performance, like any other Beretta 92 in good mechanical condition, has been highly reliable in my experience. Shooters just need to ensure that the slide, locking block and lugs are properly lubricated and the design advantages inherent to the Beretta 92 will take care of the rest.
Accuracy-wise, the 92X Performance has plenty to offer and I admit I will not be outshooting this pistol any time soon. I shot some NRA-B8 repair centers, freestyle, at a distance of 25-yards with a double action first shot. I used three different 9mm loads: 115gr Blazer Aluminum, 124gr Federal Syntech and my own 147gr subsonic handloads loaded with 3.3grs of HP38. I fired 10 rounds at each target for score.
| Blazer Al 115 | 95-2X |
| Fed Synth 124 | 92-3X |
| SBHandLd 147 | 82-2X |
The attractive Nistan finish found on this pistol’s frame and slide contrasts handsomely with the rest of the black metal parts. However this finish can be susceptible to corrosion, so 92X Performance shooters would do well to wipe their pistols after shooting them to avoid blemishes, especially during the hot and humid summer match months. Because I am left handed and use my trigger finger to fire the gun, release magazines and actuate the slide release, I would have preferred more neutrally sized safeties out of the box as these oversized parts can make pistol manipulations feel clunky. For me, the size of the safeties is large enough to somewhat crowd out the ledge of the slide release.
This can also be a concern for right-handed shooters with shorter thumbs. Since the 92X Performance has a Vertec frame, it also ships with an optional full-size grip insert. My own pistol wears this insert, but it does not fully mimic the natural curvature of traditional full-size Beretta 92 backstrap. The 92X Performance’s beavertail has a downward beak-like shape, and I think the standard beavertail would have suited this pistol just fine. One of the stronger shooters who competes with this pistol at local matches told me this beavertail shape clashed with his drawstroke and had to shift his hands accordingly.
Since its launch in 2019, there is an ever-growing number of accessories being released for the 92X Performance. Not only do I keep seeing them for sale at more gun shops nowadays, but I also notice them in other match participants’ holsters. As a hobbyist level competition shooter and all-around Beretta 92 enthusiast, I can say that a pistol like the 92X Performance with its excellent trigger, useful sights, great accuracy, strong reliability and match ready configuration is a welcome addition to the selection of available metal framed competition pistols.