From the official report of narco-war-related casualties in Mexico from December 2006 to September 2011, we show that the inter-event time distribution (calculated for a range of minimum sizes) approximately obeys simple scaling laws similar to violent conflicts in Iraq (2003–2005), Afghanistan (2008–2010) and Northern Ireland (1969–2001). Furthermore, normalizing deaths by population municipalities (the smallest Mexican political entities) yields even better fitting results.