Actually.. any sort of organized crime family or Cartel would have far superior weaponry to any law enforcement.....
You wanna order a nice new weapon for your police department you have fill out the forms.. wait.. and wait..
and get some oks.. and get funding.. and blah blah blah..
you're a criminal.. you want a new weapon.. what do you do? you make a telephone call... and transfer some money.....
Like the saying goes...
We got the guns.. they got the numbers...
The bad guys have superior firepower..... but are almost always out numbered.... at least thats the assumption all the missions in our campaign will based around
you figure that a criminal also has to watch out for other criminals as well as the law , so this helps even things out as well.....