By Chris Hershberger-Esh, MCC’s Context Analyst for Latin America and the Caribbean, based in Mexico City.
En route to Phoenix for the Mennonite Convention last summer, Fred Kauffman took a taxi from the airport to his hotel. He had just finished a term as MCC Philadelphia Coordinator, where he was actively involved with addressing gun violence.
Philadelphia has serious issues with gun violence, but its eight gun shops pale in comparison to Phoenix’s 35. Both cities have roughly the same population.
So Fred asked the taxi driver why Phoenix had so many gun shops.
“Oh, we’re close to the border,” the driver responded with a shrug.
Mexico has tight gun restrictions, so illegally moving weapons across the border to cartels and other crime organizations is a lucrative business. In fact, one out of every two American arms dealers is financially dependent on the demand from Mexico for smuggled weapons, according to a recent study by the Igarapé Institute. Annual revenues from this trafficking are estimated to be around $127 million.
In 2007, an officer from the U.S. Justice Department was conducting an ordinary inspection at a Houston, TX gun shop when he noticed something suspicious. During a 15-month period, 23 buyers had purchased 339 firearms. Sometimes they walked out with a dozen weapons at a time, including assault rifles, semi-automatic pistols and sniper rifles. And these 23 customers always paid in cash.
It was obvious to the federal agents that these customers were straw-purchasers, and the real customers were the Mexican drug cartels, whose war with each other, Mexican authorities and civilians has led to limitless bloodshed, with some 120,000 people violently killed between 2007-2012.
Of these 339 weapons, 88 have been recovered by authorities in Mexico and four made it the whole way to Guatemala. Some were found at crime scenes where police, judicial personnel, and a businessman were murdered. Overall, 87 percent of illegal guns recovered in Mexico came from the United States.
So while the United States government spends $500 million to fund the Mexican government’s war on drug cartels, loose gun regulations allow gun shops and smugglers to take in $127 million to arm the other side. U.S. military-style weaponry vs. U.S. military-style weaponry equals an all out war.
While most regions of the world have seen a decrease in violent crime over the past few decades, murder rates in Latin America have gone up. In addition to extreme inequality, Elaine Denny and Barbara F. Walter explain in an article on Political Violence at a Glance that:
One notable difference between Latin America and the rest of the world is its proximity to the United States; proximity that results in a relatively easy southward flow of weapons, a northward flow of drugs , and more meddling by a powerful neighbor.
Violence does not begin or end with the availability of guns. That being said, the drug war becomes a literal war thanks to the availability of armor-piercing rounds, semi- and fully- automatic weapons, and sniper rifles that can disable a vehicle from a mile away.
Since moving to Mexico in August, I’ve observed the reverberations of U.S. domestic policy abroad. We tend to think of domestic and international policy as being in separate realms, but the reality is, even heavily militarized international borders can be quite fluid.
How a state in the United States decides to regulate the sale of guns affects people as far away as Central America. The same lax gun regulation that allows disturbed Americans to acquire assault weapons and open fire in schools and movie theaters is arming criminal organizations in Mexico and Central America.
In a globalized world, the answer to “who is my neighbor?” is virtually endless.
Mennonite Central Committee U.S. is in the middle of a 3-year campaign entitled Fear Not: Seek Peace that seeks to address multiple forms of violence including gun violence, war and domestic violence. See how you can get involved.
MCC Fact Sheet on gun trafficking to Mexico and Central America
Chris,
Appreciate you highlighting the way that individual state laws regarding gun transactions has an INTERNATIONAL impact. Weird and terrible.
Fred
Are we also counting the military-grade hardware that the US government transferred to the Mexican government (and unsurprisingly made their way to the cartels) as well?
…am sure the WAR on DRUGS is all set up by the NWO….isay make all drugs// herbs legal already….my goodness, lock up BIG PHARMA and there pushers in white coats..guns r guns…try dr scott johnson maybe….
Not to mention Wikileaks cables revealed the opposite to be true. http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=390473&CategoryId=14091
From the article you mentioned: “The cable, which does not offer any particulars or supporting documentation, does acknowledge that the vast majority of the handguns and many of the assault rifles used by the cartels enter Mexico from the United States.” I’m not denying that some of the heavy grade weapons in Mexico might come from Central American military stockpiles, but a US diplomat pushing blame to another country isn’t a game changer in this discussion. The fact still remains that US arms trafficking is the primary provider of weapons to the Mexican cartels.
How many are provided by the US Govt to the Mexican govt and then leak to the cartels?
I’m not aware of any studies on that, but I would imagine it happens. The fact that guns are leaked from the Mexican government and some Central American militaries (who have received a great deal of arms and military aid from the US) is certainly worth discussing. Those facts, however, in no way diminish the 253,000 firearms that are bought from gun dealers in the states and trafficked to Mexico per year (up from 88k in 1999). And those facts further strengthen my argument that, broadly speaking, the US is arming both sides of an endless conflict.
The comment “87% of illegal guns recovered in Mexico came from the United States” is incorrect. The truth is that, for the year in question, the US was able to trace 87% of the firearms THAT MEXICO SUBMITTED FOR TRACING. There is no way for us to know why those guns were submitted, and it is incorrect to assume that all were involved in crime, obtained illegally, or used by drug cartels. Without knowing how many guns are seized in Mexico each year, it is impossible to calculate the relative contribution from the US. Reasonable estimates put the % more in the 17 to 35 range.
But you’re not alone. Obama claims it’s 90%, in spite of repeated corrections being provided to his press secretary.
Thanks for your comment. “87 percent” is an estimate, but it is consistent with highly credible sources, including the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), which has no incentive to inflate the numbers of how poorly the U.S. has regulated firearms. The following is a quote from an Igarape Institute study that I linked in this article:
“AFT efforts to trace firearms provided in Mexico have consistently found that an overwhelming proportion of firearms – as high as 90% – came to Mexico from the United States (Serrano, 2008). For example, a 2007 ATF trace of firearms confiscated in Mexico found that 1,805 (73.5%) of 2,455 firearms came from three of the four U.S. border states: Arizona, California, and Texas (Marks, 2006). Likewise, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that of 4,000 weapons traced by ATF (from an original sample of 7,200 serial numbers sent from Mexico), some 3,480 (87%) could be traced to U.S. dealers (Mcgreal, 2011).”
Can you include some credible sources that back your claim that “Reasonable estimates put the % more in the 17 to 35 range”?
Thanks for the response! Running fast here, but I can throw out a comment to keep things going and check back later. You say that the ATF is a credible source, but then you quote a different writer who is ‘quoting’ the ATF. That’s where the errors are coming from – people miss-quoting the ATF. From your own comments above: 7200 serial numbers sent from Mexico lead to 4,000 that were traced by ATF and of those 4000 3480 were US sourced. Look at your own math (assuming your source is correct). A) we don’t know how many guns the Mexican police recovered in crimes etc. B) we DO know that they sent 7200 requests to US. c) we DO know that US traced 4000. Looking at that sample alone, 3480 of the 7200 (48%) submitted were traced to US sources. So, to summarize this example, 48% of guns submitted for tracing were from the US. 44% were for some reason either not traced or untraceable (3200/7200). That leaves 8% that were traced and ? non-US sources?. Doesn’t actually state where the remainder were from. But in no way does this indicate that 48% of the Mexican crime guns are from the US, and certainly not 87%. Does that explanation make sense? Your math is only correct if you assume that ALL Mexican crime guns are submitted to the US for tracing, and if you can explain why 3200 are removed from the sample set. Numbers are easy; verbiage is more difficult for me. Look how long this is getting and it’s only a quick response.
I looked at the Igarape study you linked when I read your article. Their documentation is not detailed enough for an easy corroboration. Citing “ATF, 2012” as a reference doesn’t provide much of a path for review. But I intend to check it out. Many of their references were newer than what I’m familiar with, so I’m interested. I have never ever seen an ATF statement that 90% of Mexican firearms come from US domestic dealers. {Perhaps you could accept a challenge as well to document that comment.}
Remember, not all Mexican crime guns are submitted to the US for tracing. Mexico is a destination for international arms trafficking. One criteria Mexican investigators use in determining whether to submit a gun to US for tracing is Probable Origin. For example, if the gun has a complete serial number, and is stamped RUGER, seems like a good bet that the US could get some information on it. Thus, IF it is determined that it might be helpful in the investigation, that RUGER number would be submitted to the ATF. Rather than asking, say, China. Conversely, if the Mexican investigator is looking at a firearm stamped “product of Hong Kong”, he won’t send that to the US for tracing. Likewise, of course, items without serial numbers (either too old, from non-US sources, or obliterated) will not be submitted for tracing.
Thus it is a simple math error to confuse ‘number of guns submitted to US for tracing’ with ‘total guns recovered in Mexican crime’ but journalistic jurisprudence compels us to search for truth. It is easy to find an article to cite that supports our views, but more challenging to critique that article before hand. Egads, look at all these words! I apologize for the length. Thanks again for the dialog!
Thanks for your response. Anybody putting together these estimates would agree that no firearm tracing number/stat is 100% accurate; it is a very difficult to get an accurate picture of the situation without being able to trace guns that haven’t yet been recovered…
That being said, it’s safe to say the number is quite high. Here is a statement from William Hoover, Assistant Director of Field Operations for the ATF given during a U.S. House hearing:
“In analyzing the data collected through ATF’s investigative and regulatory operations that have been focused on the abatement of illegal firearms trafficking to Mexico, there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States.”
These numbers aren’t all that surprising if you look at the context. Firearms are very tightly controlled in Mexico. The only legal distributor in the whole country is in Mexico City and run by the military. Conversely, the border states Arizona, Texas and California have lax gun laws (compared to most of the world). It is far easier smuggling stuff south compared to north across the US/Mexico border, and we know that lots of people and drugs easily cross to the north. Buying guns in the U.S. from a straw purchaser and then finding a way to get them into Mexico is probably a low key operation compared to the other stuff they pull off.
Why is it such a stretch to believe that cartels get most of their guns from the U.S. given this reality? If they aren’t getting the majority of their guns from the US, where do you think they are coming from? China? Guatemala?
Thanks for the dialogue!
Explanation of the myth “87% of Mexican crime guns come from the US”
source 1: http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110209-mexicos-gun-supply-and-90-percent-myth
from Stratfor: According to the GAO report, some 30,000 firearms were seized from criminals by Mexican authorities in 2008. Of these 30,000 firearms, information pertaining to 7,200 of them (24 percent) was submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for tracing. Of these 7,200 guns, only about 4,000 could be traced by the ATF, and of these 4,000, some 3,480 (87 percent) were shown to have come from the United States.
This means that the 87 percent figure relates to the number of weapons submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF that could be successfully traced and not from the total number of weapons seized by Mexican authorities or even from the total number of weapons submitted to the ATF for tracing. In fact, the 3,480 guns positively traced to the United States equals less than 12 percent of the total arms seized in Mexico in 2008 and less than 48 percent of all those submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF for tracing. This means that almost 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico in 2008 were not traced back to the United States
Source 1A: http://www.nssfblog.com/report-shatters-myth-of-mexicos-gun-supply/
is quoting same article, but has a nice graphic display that shows the subsets of information.
Source2: http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/counting-mexicos-guns/
good writeup, emphasizes that without knowing how many crime guns are seized in Mexico in a given time frame, it is impossible to clearly state what proportion come from US.
got cut off.
source 3: http://www.atf.gov/statistics/index.html
see their report on Mexico 2007-2012.
Thanks again for your openness. These stories start spreading and they’re hard to stop!
C – thanks for the response to my request to document the 90% claim. You are correct that Hoover made the 90% comment. When confronted, he admitted that he had made a mistake. That’s in the congressional testimony later; also he clarified the comment with at least one news agency.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/02/myth-percent-small-fraction-guns-mexico-come/
from another article:
Nevertheless, on February 2008, William Hoover, Assistant Director for Field Operations of ATF, testified before Congress that over 90% of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico originated from various sources within the United States. However, following a review by the U.S. Office of the Inspector General (OIG) on September 2010, the ATF admitted that “the 90% figure cited to Congress could be misleading because it applied only to the small portion of Mexican crime guns that are traced.” During this 2010 review by the OIG, the ATF could not provide updated information on the percentage of traced Mexican crime guns that were sourced to (that is, found to be manufactured in or imported through) the United States.The November 2010 OIG analysis of ATF data suggest a low percentage of successful weapons traces, ranging from 27% to 44%.
IT’s “a stretch” to believe your article and sources due to the clear fallacies presented. Some of your facts were ‘derived’ from ATF reports, but the wording was changed in the process. One f your references is a newspaper article, quoting another source, who got information from… Just saying that I’m afraid this kind of misinformation gives more fodder for the other team. In order to effect change, we need to be credible and believable. I could share some comments on other parts of your article as well, but only if you request.
Thanks again for your responses and dialog. We can do more together than apart.
-J
I’ve enjoyed the dialogue, but if your trump card to refute ATF statements under oath and credible academic research is a Fox News article, I think we’ll just leave it at that. I will leave this whole discussion on the blog though, of course, so that readers can decide.
But I do appreciate you taking the time to debate this.
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