– Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. –
Last year, around 2,500 Mexicans died in the twin wars drug cartels are waging against each other and against the Mexican state, using weapons smuggled in from the United States. In the first 11 months of this year, the death toll was 5,367, according to the Mexican attorney general. Next year?
There is no end in sight. At least two of the lethal ingredients in the toxic brew that fuels Mexico’s ever-widening violence are unlikely to change: lax American gun laws and a Mexican border that barely controls north-south traffic. On many of the crossing points along the 2,000-mile frontier, travelers coming in from the United States, by car or on foot, are routinely waved through without even having to show identity papers.
Weak Mexican border controls rarely feature in official or academic reports on a problem that has prompted some experts and U.S. publications to wonder whether Mexico is a “failing state”. That’s the headline over a cover story on Mexico in the latest edition of the business magazine Forbes. Mexican officials reject the label.
But privately, they concede that Mexican authorities are doing a less-than-thorough job in searching and monitoring north-south traffic. They tend to point in the other direction, to the easy availability of guns in the United States, the armory of Mexico’s criminal mafias.
According to statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), the agency charged with regulating the firearms industries, there are 9,161 licensed arms dealers in the four states bordering Mexico — California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Buyers from licensed establishments need to go through a background check and the serial numbers of their purchases can be traced.
No background checks and no paperwork is necessary for weapons traded between private citizens on the “secondary” market — gun shows, over the Internet, through classified advertisements. Around 40 percent of all gun sales in the United States, where private citizens own at least 200 million guns, are on the informal market, estimates the Violence Policy Center, a Washington-based group in favor of tougher gun controls.
How many guns are smuggled across the porous border? Nobody knows, and a frequently used figure of 2,000 every day appears to be more of an urban legend than an estimate based on evidence. It would amount to 730,000 smuggled guns a year.
Whatever the number, it is enough for the U.S. State Department, on its website, to advise citizens contemplating a visit to Mexico that “recent Mexican army and police confrontations with drug cartels have taken on the characteristics of small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and, on occasion, grenades”.
AMONG WEAPONS OF CHOICE: COP KILLERS
Almost all the weapons seized inside Mexico or left at the scene of shootouts have been traced back to the United States through eTrace, an electronic system the ATF set up to trace illicit firearms. The cartel killers’ weapons of choice: AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles. Favorite pistols: Colt .38 Super, Glock 9 millimeter, and the FN 5-7, nicknamed “cop killer” because it can pierce a flak jacket at a range of 300 meters.
All these can be legally (and easily) acquired in the United States by citizens and legal residents without a criminal record, after a background check with the Federal Bureau of Investigations that often takes less than 15 minutes. The ease with which Americans can get arms flares into public controversy at regular intervals, usually after a gun owner with a grudge commits a massacre in a school or other public place.
Attempts to introduce more restrictions have failed regularly, and this year the Supreme Court ended decades of legal argument by ruling that the second amendment of the U.S. constitution, written 219 years ago, does guarantee an individual’s right “to keep and bear arms”.
Even Eduardo Medina Mora, the outspoken Mexican attorney general who makes no secret of his frustration with the flow of weapons from the north, seems resigned to the prospect that the United States will not change its gun laws to keep Mexico from sliding into deeper trouble.
“Although … it may seem absurd to us that a (U.S.) citizen can buy an AK-47, an AR-15, or a Barrett .50, it’s the law of the land,” he told the Spanish newspaper El Pais in November. The last item on his list is a sniper rifle that costs $8,650, weighs 30 pounds and can punch through an armored vehicle from a mile away.
On the U.S. side of the border, the ATF has just launched an advertising campaign in Arizona to remind citizens that buying guns on behalf of others — so called-straw purchases — carries penalties of up to 10 years in jail. Using straw buyers has been one of the cartels’ methods to evade background checks. Gun shows are another.
Just before entering Mexico, large signs at crossing points read: “Warning: Firearms and Ammunition Illegal in Mexico.” Chances that you are stopped and searched by Mexican officials are slim.
Reuters correspondent Tim Gaynor, author of a forthcoming book on the frontier (Midnight on the Line: The Secret Life of the U.S.-Mexico Border) reports: “In scores of crossings I have made to Mexico over several years, I have been stopped on just two or three occasions. Never once have I had my car searched. The odds are heavily in favor of the smugglers.”
Time for Mexico to start watching its border rather than pointing a finger at the United States?
You can contact the author at Debusmann@reuters.com. For previous columns by Bernd Debusmann, click here.
Sure. Why not? Watching borders definitely better than finger pointing.
Let's assume Mexico does as adequate a job watching the border as the US would do. . . what would happen? Drug Cartels quit the business for lack of fire power? If there were no high powered sophisticated guns there would be no cartels, right? Mobsters in America during the thirties had it so rough. No glocks, AK-47s or Barrett .50s. It's a wonder the mafia survived in America.
Perhaps a combination of the analyses behind *The Case for Piracy* *America's decades old failed drug war* and this column are in order. If we combined all three would we still be talking about the border?
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The US gov’t should get into the drug production business. We could produce a high quality, high purity product at a fraction of the current cost to the user.
We could contract with other countries to produce the raw material e.g. cocoa leaves or poppies, ship them to plants in the US for processing and distribution under highly regulated conditions.
Laws concerning there usage would stay about the same e.g. no driving, or in the workplace, and around equipment, etc but recreational use would be decriminalized. Sure there would be some abuse but compared to the current chaos it would be minimal.
The problem would be what do we do with all the people involved in the drug trade when they lose their jobs.
What is the problem. Let them blow each other away.
It is a wake up call to the Mexican government (an oxymoron if there ever was one).
Just maybe mexican citizens will finally take action against the criminals who have been running (raping) the country for decades.
Nay!! That’s like expecting Illinois citizens to vote the Democratic criminals who have been bleeding Illinois taxpayers for decades, out of office. Never happen.
This guy’s distains for our constitution show’s loud and clear with his statement that our constitution was written 219 years ago, ( Like because it’s that old it shouldn’t be taken seriously.) and does guarantee an individual’s right “to keep and bear arms” .
He’s just another liberal that thinks if there were no guns there would be peace and harmony and everyone would love one another and we would all hold hands and sing we are the world.
Liberals, they have the naivety of 4-year-olds.
This is pure propaganda. It is a meme that the anti-gun left has been trying for the last year or so.
Refuting the “facts” in this piece is easy as there are no facts, only carefully crafted talking points.
Mexico needs more guns! It has one of the most corrupt governments in the world. It desperately needs its own 2nd Amendment to insure that ALL of its people are protected.
Every time I see a “news” video on this story, said American-puchased guns include machine guns, fragmentation grenades, and other items not legally sold in the U.S…. Hey Mexico, cry me a river.
guns and borders? kidnapping and killings?
it all distills back to the problematic drug war
cant we just all chew some coca and get along.
it is America’s fault for promulgating such a knowingly un-winnable notion.
I much rather deal with a few more homeless drug addicts then infinite chicanery.
If the importation of guns into Mexico completely and perfectly stopped instantly, right now, the rate of murder by Mexican criminals would not slow at all, ever. Guns are durable, not consumable.
If you Mexican politicians want to stop crime, end your corruption and do the job you are paid to do. If you socialist reporters want to escape personal gun freedom, move to Mexico (or Europe, or Africa). NO JUSTICE / NO PEACE>
Since a number of comments focussed on the legalization of drugs as the best way to end the violence and the traffic of drugs north, guns south, here is a column suggesting just that:
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/20 08/12/03/einstein-insanity-and-the-war-o n-drugs/
While U.S. guns and gun laws are not the root cause of the problem, the cause of ILLEGAL drug trade related violence in Mexico (as opposed to LEGAL and morally justified self defense by innocent citizens defending themselves against criminals, a distinction which Debusmann and 99% of other anti-gun “journalists conveniently gloss over when citing statistics about gun deaths) is certainly related to some very ill considered U.S. laws–those prohibiting the drugs whose illicit traffic provides the revenue that fuels the drug cartel’s market share and distribution territory centered violence. The violence surrounding the drug trade is a direct result of its illegality which prevents businesses from increasing their market share and marketing their product through other channels. Think about it–when was the last time you read about a shoot out between Pfizer and Merck executives?
To the extent someone wants to blame firearms they should look no further than corrupt mexican police and military sources. Debusmann’s silence regarding this other likely source of arms is a telling indicator that his goal is to vilify U.S. gun laws, not to thoughtfully delve into this issue.
Notice Debusmann’s dismissive tone toward the Second Amendment, implying that it’s an anachronistic relic : ”… and this year the Supreme Court ended decades of legal argument by ruling that the second amendment of the U.S. constitution, written 219 years ago, does guarantee an individual’s right “to keep and bear arms”.
Of course he misses the irony that the Second Amendment was written simultaneously with the First Amendment. Liberals tend to worship the First Amendment while distaining the Second Amendment, as if the Constitution were a buffet, where you can pick out what you like and discard the rest. They have depended on activist judges to distort and re-write the Constitution to their liking for so long, that they were outraged that the Supreme Court’s recent interpretation of the Second Amendment actually relied on the original intent of the people who wrote it.
“No background checks and no paperwork is necessary for weapons traded between private citizens on the “secondary” market — gun shows, over the Internet, through classified advertisements.”
That is just flat out untrue. Such a basic and easily confirmable fact being wrong, indicates to me a profound ignorance of the subject.
Hahahhaa….Mexico blamming the US for it’s problems. That is rich. Oh okay. Aren’t MILLIONS of them here illegally?
Moreover, I’m pretty sure that Mexico - being the bastion of laws and regulations that it is - gets all of its drugs from the US too right? Oh wait, no it doesn’t.
If they didn’t get them from us, they’d get them from their other border on the south. There’s a reason it’s a third world crap hole, and why everyone there is trying to tunnel into the US.
I wonder if the uninformed author has a problem with the Mexican military engaging our Border Patrol people ON US soil? How about their acting on behalf of drug dealers smuggling their wares into our country?
“lax American gun laws”
Puh-lease…!!! My family ranched in Mexico (Durango) for 25 years. It’s not lax American gun laws causing Mexico’s problems, IT’S MEXICANS!!!!
CORRUPTION is your problem, not American gun laws. Mexico has no real legal system, so the only recourse a person has in many instances is taking the law into their own hands…and the cr*p ball just starts rolling downhill from there! Mexican politicians and law enforcement officials are BOUGHT AND PAID-FOR by the cartels.
Mr. Debusmann appears to have no experience in the reality of Mexican society or he wouldn’t make such utterly inane statements.
Just once I would like to see an article on criminal weapons that correctly identifies those guns and does not use the propaganda phrase “AK-47.” You can’t purchase a real AK-47 at gun shows or from a pricate individual or at a gun shop without paying a federal tax and getting registered with the ATF. What you can buy is a Chinese Type 56 semi-automatic rifle that looks pretty much like an AK-47. Is this what was meant? Are rifles really used all that much in crime? Are no other countries likely sources for criminal weapons than the US? Cuba was, at one time, pretty free with weapons shipments to anyone who could claim to be a revolutionary. Nicaragua and El Salvador have a surplus of guns.
Articles like this one, full of ignorant comments about guns, don’t help us understand what is happening. The gun does not make the criminal. The criminal seeks the gun, not the other way around. Other weapons will work if one source of guns is closed down.
Ah yes, the usual biased platitudes and falsity.
The Fn5.7 “Cop Killer” for example. The armor-piercing version is not available to the public. What you get in the US, if you are not police or military, is a version of that cartridge that is nothing like the type intended for use in the FNP90 and the 5-7 Pistol.
Mexican drug cartels will get their guns any way they want. Not all guns on the shelf in the US are actually produced there. So there is no proof that the guns come direct from the north. The article even uses “not sure” on that statistic.
But certainly people are always sure about things when it comes to the disarmament agenda. Nobody is sure how many innocent Iraqis were killed since 2003, but the occupation continues. Nobody is sure how many Afgans outside of any relation to Al Queda were killed by US forces, yet that war continues. Nobody is sure how many lives are destroyed by the garbage that Hollywood pipes into peoples’ homes, but that continues. Nobody is sure how much all that “humanitarian” aid and nation-building money actually harms more than helps, but yet those things continue too.
Yet guns were around long before all those “modern norms” came about, long before 100 years of social engineering by the so-called “progressives”.
And that same old argument is alluded to: because there was no AR-15 219 years ago when the Second Amendment was written, then perhaps it’s wrong or should be re-written? Well then, there was no radio or television, or internet either, back when the First Amendment was written. I can hear the arguement “But….but…. *snivel* guns kill people!”
Yeah, and Hitler used radio and films to achieve his ends and his regime killed a lot of people too. Stalin had the same ends. Consider also these these were regimes that people thought were protecting them, that approx. 100 million people murdered by their own governments in the 20th century is still not enough to make people distrust any government that wants to disarm them.
But based on the logic, the TV, radio, and internet, not existing 219 years ago, needs to be regulated quick! Before another Hitler or Stalin gets hold of it!
And in the meantime, cars that are designed to break the speed limit should also be banned. Based on the logic that “guns are only for killing people”, a car with a lot of power is only for going beyond the posted limit. I bring this up because there are a lot of people who will not care a whit about liberty so long as their precious sports car is not touched. And certainly this could be the case because the car is a great toy for the adult-sized children who fall for the shallow logic of this article.
I lived in Tucson Arizona for four years or so…ending four years ago. I thought I would share a little of my experience there with you.
The Immigration Debate is very much discussed on the American side of the border by average Americans on a near daily basis. Of course the war on drugs..crime by illegals..job loss to illegals…border habitat destruction by crossers…Mexico`s culture of corruption and a host of other topics are regular parts of these discussions.
One thing that really stuck in my mind more than some others was the fact that teenageers in the town of Sierra Vista were being paid 200 dollars cash on their lunch hour, while at high school, to deliver McDonalds sandwiches to illegals hiding in an Arroyo waiting on darkness to fall so they could continue their journey north. After nightfall…these same teenagers would then make 1000-1500 more dollars to drive a carload of illegals to Phoenix…a 7 hour round trip.
I often wondered how these teenagers would ever be satisfied making 150 dollars a week cooking hamburgers in a McDonalds resturaunt like their classmates did. I mean what kind of values are these teens going to have?
The Mexican border towns have basically survived and thrived for the last 4 decades on servicing the drug and people and gun smuggling industries that naturally belong there…and the new Mexican War on these people is really starting to pile up the bodies.
The worldwide criminalization of personal drug consumption and the vast sums of untaxed revenue is the root cause of a huge percentage of the social…personal…and local and national law-enforcement issues.
I mean really..If I want to get “High”…all I have to do is make an appointment with my physician…tell the right lies…and get a perscription to give me the desired “High”….or I can go to the “bad part of town”…and get similar or identical items from drug dealers and or addicts..No difference really…except the side effects and long term health issues of the perscriptions might be more dangerous to my overall health and well being….and the obvious risk of incarceration and public humiliation are worse when dealing with criminals dealing drugs.
This might be the biggest delimma facing the governments and peoples of the world..even bigger then the threat of Islamic Militants and Nuclear Bombs.
The seemingly real need for a certian percentage of the population of the world to self administer drugs or alcohol on a daily basis, and the seemingly real need for another percentage of the population to dictate certian religous belief systems upon the rest of the people left in the middle…
I guess these two groups of people…who might be considered as one group…will keep you journalist busy forever!!!
Dan
Oklahoma, U.S.A.
Its interesting to me that no matter what the problem the US is at fault, too many illegals and the US should build up the Mexican economy so they will stay, now the drug gangs run wild down there and its the US gun laws at fault. maybe the real reasons are a failed, corrupt and poorly run Mexican govt. typical third world country with oil
Norm,
Where are the statistics on how many of the victims of gun crime were armed? The shear number of victims makes the case for armed self-defense. Thank you.
I find comparing small countries with large countries to be misleading. Especially when within the US there are areas with differing gun laws and differing gun crime stats. My only question to those that like stats is why, in states like Vermont that have almost no gun laws on the books and where there you do not need a license to carry a gun, do you find the lowest gun crime per capita in this nation.
Maybe when criminals know that they could be surrounded by armed citizens they are more hesitant to use there gun? Maybe if more citizens were armed at that Christmas Eve shooting the psycho would have been less effective in his shooting spree. It is hard to have a shooting spree when the spree is directed back at you by the armed citizenry around you. Maybe the psycho may have not even attempted such stupidity if he knew he would have been quickly cut down. Of course he may have thought of an even better way of committing mass murder like a bomb. I am surprised he didn’t think of it and opted for a gun. Oh, right. He was a psycho. You can’t predict what a psycho will do or when he will do it.
Also, as this economic situation grows here in the US more crime will occur. Cime and economice are linked. I hope those that believe guns are “bad” do not fall victim to gun crime. Remember the Boy Scout motto: Always be prepared! This is your best defense because, when seconds count the police are minitues away.
Excuse me, but did this esteemed columnist suggest that we as citizens of the US curb or give up our rights so that the Mexican border police could continue with their siesta? Why are such smart people so incapable of simple observation?