United States Delays Gun Smuggling Control Laws into Mexico

18 March 2009

United States Delays Gun Smuggling Control Laws into Mexico

By Maria E. Molina
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America


MEXICO CITY, Mexico
– Ninety percent of the guns that are used in Mexico to commit heinous crimes come from the United States.  Machine guns get smuggled into Mexico from the United States all the time.  While the United States has just begun to consider the violence in Mexico a threat to United States safety, the threat of lax United States gun laws have affected Mexico’s fight against drug cartels for the past year.  The United States maintains a staunch immigration policy but a loose gun control policy. These policies not only affect the violence in Mexico but human smuggling into the United States.

With the death count last year in Mexico at 6,290, more than the United States has lost in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Mexican officials are pleading with United States counterparts to help stop the southbound gun smuggling and focus.  Yet, the United States government has delayed any proliferation of new laws that would help gun smuggling.  In 2007, there were 7,600 federally licensed arms dealers in United States border states and 50,000 nationwide, but the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms inspected just 5 percent of them. As well an assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004 has not been renewed by Congress.

Lawmakers are not sure how high-powered weapons get in the hands of drug traffickers, but some come from the United States military.  The Department of Defense doesn’t track what it purchases, so the possibility that United States military guns end up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels is extremely feasible.  Also, the weapons are becoming more sophisticated and now include .50-caliber rifles with five-inch shells capable of penetrating walls.  A law that speaks to tracking of military weapons would also assist in controlling gun smuggling into Mexico.

Federal United States efforts to stop the smuggling of weapons were clearly not enough.

For more information, please see:

Alternet – Mexico’s Drug War Bloodbath: Guns from the U.S. Are Destabilizing the Country – 18 March 2009

Los Angeles Times – U.S. shares blame in Mexico drug violence, senators say – 18 March 2009

San Francisco Chronicle – Focus shifts to flow of cash, arms into Mexico – 18 March 2009

The Washington Post – U.S. Efforts Against Mexican Cartels Called Lacking – 18 March 2009

Author: Impunity Watch Archive