Smuggling of firearms into Mexico
Many firearms are acquired in the U.S. by women with no criminal history, who transfer their purchases to smugglers through relatives, boyfriends, and acquaintances who then smuggle them to Mexico a few at a time.
[18][19] However, while many U.S. military grade weapons such as grenades and light anti-tank rockets are acquired by the cartels through the huge supply of arms left over from the wars in Central America and Asia, a report from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) found combination weapons that were counterfeits whose specific courses could not be identified.
[22] It has been determined that at least some of the M203 grenade launchers and M16A2 assault rifles cited above are of counterfeit origin manufactured for the cartels, possibly to resemble the weapons carried by the Mexican Special Forces.
[23] The U.S. government, primarily through ATF, ICE and Customs and Border Protection, is assisting Mexico with technology, equipment and training.
[24] Project Gunrunner is part of the ATF's effort to collaborate with the Mexican authorities and its "cornerstone" has been the expansion of eTrace, a computerized system to facilitate tracing guns which were manufactured in or imported legally to the United States.
[28][29] Nevertheless, in 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.
[30] However, following a review by the U.S. Office of the Inspector General (OIG) in 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.”[25] 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.
[31] In February 2011, Stratfor Global Intelligence calculated the number to be situated between 12% and 48%, and reported almost 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico in 2008 were not traced back to the United States.
[35] Mexican Army officials interviewed by OIG personnel said their role is to safeguard the weapons and that they have no specific authority to assist in trafficking investigations.
To gain access to the weapons, ATF officials must make a formal request to the Attorney General of Mexico for each gun, citing a specific reason that access is needed, demonstrating that the requested information is related to a Mexican criminal investigation, and providing a description of the gun with the serial number.
[35] Due to these barriers, ATF and wider Department efforts to gain access to weapons in Mexican military custody have not been successful.
[41] Gun-rights groups use the absolute number between seizures and traces to question whether the majority of illegal guns in Mexico really come from the United States.
[42] Gun control advocates use the 48% to 87% successful US origin trace rate to call for re-enactment of the sunsetted Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994-2004.
A 2009 U.S. State Department audit showed 26 percent of guns sold legally to governments in Mexico and Central America were diverted to the wrong hands.
[48][51] The gun-rights group Gun Owners of America accused the ATF of attempting to "boost statistics of seized firearms with American commercial provenance from Mexican crime scenes.
[63] There currently is no computerized national gun registry in the United States, but the Firearms Tracing System is partially automated thanks to registration records with individual names and addresses, along with other identifying information.
6028) that would authorize $73.5 million to be appropriated over three years to increase ATF resources committed to disrupting the flow of illegal guns into Mexico.
[73] Lawmakers included US$10 million in the economic stimulus package for Project Gunrunner, a federal crackdown on U.S. gun-trafficking networks.
[75] U.S. President Barack Obama has proposed to ratify an inter-American treaty known as CIFTA[76] to curb international small arms trafficking throughout the Americas.
