Gun Trafficking and the Southwest Border
Overview of Gun Trafficking from the United States to Mexico
In the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Drug Threat Assessment
2009, Mexican drug
trafficking organizations (DTOs) were identified as the greatest
organized crime and drug
trafficking threat to the United States worldwide.1 With increased
U.S. efforts to interdict narcotic
smugglers in the Caribbean and Florida in the late 1980s and 1990s,
the Colombian drug cartels
began subcontracting with Mexican DTOs to smuggle cocaine into the
United States across the
Southwest border. By the late 1990s, Mexican DTOs had pushed aside
the Colombians and
gained greater control and market share of cocaine trafficking into
the United States. Today,
Mexico is a major supplier to U.S. markets of heroin,
methamphetamine, and marijuana and the
major transit country for cocaine smuggled into the United States.
The Department of State
estimates that as much as 90% of the cocaine entering the United
States now transits through
Mexico.2
Since taking office in December 2006, Mexican President Felipe
Calderón has made combating
drug cartels3 and drug violence a top priority of his
administration. President Calderón has
deployed some Mexican army contingents and federal police to
cartel-controlled areas throughout
Mexico to re-establish government control.4 In response, drug cartel
enforcers reportedly are
buying semiautomatic versions of AK-47 and AR-15 style assault
rifles, and other military-style
firearms, including .50 caliber sniper rifles in the United States.
With those rifles and other
armaments,5 the cartels are achieving parity in terms of firepower
with the Mexican army and law
enforcement. President Calderón has called upon the United States to
increase its efforts to
suppress the flow of U.S. firearms into Mexico. According to the
U.S. Department of Justice,
drug-related murders in Mexico doubled from 2006 to 2007, and more
than doubled again in
2008 to 6,200 murders.6 Of the murders in 2008, nearly 10% involved
law enforcement officers
or military personnel killed in the line of duty.7
More than 23,000 firearms were recovered by Mexican authorities and
submitted for tracing to
the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives
(ATF) from FY2004 through FY2008.8 Although only a fraction of
recovered firearms are
submitted for tracing,9 approximately 87% of traced firearms were
determined to have originated
in the United States.10 Law enforcement authorities in both nations
are confronting the Southwest
border paradigm: drugs and illegal migrants flow north, guns and
money flow south.11 The
Mexican government estimates that 2,000 firearms are smuggled across
the Southwest border
daily.12 Although firearms trafficking is not the only reason
violent crime is increasing in Mexico,
reducing the flow of illegal firearms from the United States to
Mexico would arguably reduce
crime rates in Mexico and improve public safety.
Mexican gun laws are generally much stricter than U.S. gun laws.13
The Department of State’s
Bureau of Consular Affairs “Tips for Travelers to Mexico” warns U.S.
gun owners not to take
firearms to Mexico unless they have a permit from the Mexican
Embassy, as several dozen U.S.
citizens have been incarcerated in Mexico on weapons-related
charges, including some who
inadvertently carried a U.S.-licensed weapon into Mexico.14 In its
publication, Guide To The
Interstate Transportation of Firearms, the National Rifle
Association (NRA) also warns that
firearms are “severely restricted” in Mexico, but offers information
on how firearms can be taken
legally to Mexico for sporting purposes.15
In many ways, the gun trafficking issue between Mexico and the
United States is analogous to the
“crime gun” trafficking issue that has arisen among states within
the United States.16 Some states
have more liberal gun laws, and others, stricter gun laws.
Oftentimes, the latter view the former as
the source of many crime guns and, hence, gun-related crimes.17 It
is noteworthy that the cross-border
flow of illegal firearms has also been an issue for Canada,18
because Canadian gun laws
are also generally much stricter than U.S. gun laws.19 Indeed, both
Mexico and Canada, in
addition to a minority of U.S. states, require the registration of
most privately held firearms, but
there is no U.S. federal registry of firearms.20
Illegal gun trafficking from the United States to Mexico reportedly
ranges from frequent small-scale
smuggling of one or two handguns per border crossing to less
frequent, larger-scale
conspiracies to smuggle large shipments of military armaments.21 The
Department of Homeland
Security’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Immigration
and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) and one of its predecessor agencies, the U.S. Customs Service,
have interdicted large
weapons shipments on occasion. It has been reported that firearms
are frequently diverted from
legal commercial channels to illegal channels in the United States
and then smuggled into
Mexico.22 Although cross-border firearms trafficking is illegal and
a high-risk endeavor, the
reward is great, with profit margins that in the past have typically
ranged between 300% and
500%.23
Endnotes
1 National Drug Intelligence Center,
National
Drug Threat Assessment 2009, U.S. Department of Justice, Product
2008-Q0317-005, December 2008, p. III.
2 Department of State Bureau of International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, International Narcotics
Control Strategy Report 2009, February 2009.
3 Some law enforcement agencies and observers prefer
to use the term “drug trafficking organizations” when referring to
these groups. The term drug cartel remains the dominant term used
colloquially and in the press, but some experts disagree with this
because “cartel” often refers to price-setting groups and it is not
clear that the Mexican drug cartels are setting illicit drug prices.
4 See CRS Report R40582, Mexico’s Drug-Related
Violence, by June S. Beittel.
5 One commentator has asked, “Where are the
military-grade firearms really coming from?” Despite press accounts
to the contrary, grenades, rocket launchers, bazookas, and
high-explosives are not easily obtainable in normal (non-military)
commercial channels in the United States. However, a significant
number of these items are imported legally by the Government of
Mexico from the United States, prompting this commentator to suggest
that many of those items are illegally trafficked in Mexico by
corrupt government officials or stolen by deserting Mexican
soldiers. This commentator also suggests that other military-grade
firearms that were previously transferred by the United States to
other Central American countries as part of military aid packages
have been trafficked illegally to Mexico. See Bill Conroy, “Legal
U.S. Arms Exports May Be Source of Narco Syndicates Rising
Firepower,” Narcosphere, March 29,
2009.
6 U.S. Department of Justice, Statement of David
Ogden, Deputy Attorney General, before the United States Senate
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, “Southern
Border Violence: Homeland Security Threats, Vulnerabilities, and
Responsibilities,” March 25, 2009, p. 5.
7 Ibid.
8 U.S. Government Accountability Office,
Firearms
Trafficking: U.S. Efforts to Combat Arms Trafficking to Mexico
Face Planning and Coordination Challenges, GAO-09-709, June 29,
2009, p. 18.
9 According to GAO, Mexican authorities recovered
approximately 30,000 firearms in FY2008. Of those firearms, 7,200
were submitted for tracing. Ibid., p. 16.
10 Ibid., p. 15.
11 Oscar Becera, “Firing Line – Tracking Mexico’s
Illegal Weapons,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, April 28, 2008.
12 Alfredo Corchado, “Mexico’s violence to intensify,
Officials from both sides of border may be targets, experts
predict.” Dallas Morning News, January 4, 2009, p. 1A.
13 David Kopel, Guns in American Society,
“Mexico,” Second Amendment Project (2007), last accessed on July
23, 2009. Also, see Library of Congress, Law Library, Firearms
Regulations in Various Foreign Countries, Report LL98-3, 97-20110,
(May 1998), pp. 131-141.
14 U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular
Affairs, “Mexico: Country Specific Information,” September 13, 2007.
15 National Rifle Association,
Guide to Interstate Transportation of Firearms (2008), last
accessed on May 22, 2008.
16 According to ATF, a “crime gun” is any firearm
that is illegally possessed, used in crime, or suspected to have
been
used in crime. An abandoned firearm may also be categorized as a
crime gun if it is suspected it was used in a crime or
illegally possessed. See U.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Crime Gun Trace
Reports (2000), National Report, The ATF Youth Crime Gun
Interdiction Initiative, (July 2002), p. A-3.
17 For example, the state gun laws in New York and
New Jersey are much stricter than in states like Pennsylvania and
Virginia. In response to evidence of interstate gun trafficking, the
Virginia General Assembly passed a law limiting
handgun purchases to one gun per sale in an attempt to thwart
out-of-state gun traffickers from coming to Virginia to
buy multiple handguns. Va. Code § 18.2-308.2:2(P)(1).
18 Charlie Gillis, “American Guns, Canadian Violence:
Weapons Are Crossing The Border by The Thousands and The
Number of People Wounded and Killed in This Country Is Mounting,”
Macleans, August 10, 2005.
19 Library of Congress, Law Library, Firearms
Regulations in Various Foreign Countries, Report LL98-3, 97-20110,
(May 1998), pp. 25-39.
20 Under the National Firearms Act (described below),
the U.S. Attorney General maintains the National Firearms
Registry and Transfer Record (NFRTR), which is a registry of
machineguns that fire in full-automatic mode, certain
other short-barreled and easily concealable firearms, as well as
destructive devices.
21 Oscar Becera, “Firing Line – Tracking Mexico’s
Illegal Weapons,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, April 28, 2008. Also,
see Lora Lumpe, “The U.S. Arms Both Sides of Mexico’s Drug War,”
Covert Action Quarterly, Summer 1997, no. 61,
pp. 39-46.
22 Ibid.
23 Tim Weiner and Ginger Thompson, “U.S. Guns
Smuggled Into Mexico Feed Drug War,” New York Times, May 19,
2001, p. 3.
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