More than 2,000 guns recovered in Mexico & Central America linked to Pima County firearms dealers

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At least 2,259 firearms recovered in Mexico and Central America after violent crimes were traced to gun stores in Pima County, according to records from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms compiled and released by a group that seeks to prevent gun trafficking.

In the report, the "Iron River of Weapons: its sources and contents," the Oakland-based non-profit Stop US Arms to Mexico used ATF data released as part of a FOIA lawsuit to trace 53,411 firearms recovered in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras over a seven-year period to stores in the U.S.

The data shows traces from every state in the U.S., but the lion's share of weapons—just under three-fourths—hailed from the southwestern U.S.

Nearly 40 percent of the recovered firearms, or 22,506 guns were traced to Texas. Meanwhile, 17 percent of the recovered guns, or 9,451 weapons, came from Arizona, according to the data.

Another 9,348 guns came from California and New Mexico.

The group said as violence in Mexico has grown, Mexican officials have recovered "an increasing number of firearms" and submitted them to ATF for tracing, and tracing requests increased 45 percent from 2015 to 2022.

"ATF continues to identify more than two thirds of these guns as sourced from the United States – manufactured in or imported into the United States, purchased, and trafficked over the U.S.-Mexico border," the group said. They added about one-sixth of the recovered guns have an undetermined origin, so the "proportion of U.S.-sourced guns is likely even higher."

"Only a small portion of guns trafficked into Mexico are recovered there," they said, adding that the "best analysis of the number of firearms trafficked from the United States to Mexico " shows as many as 253,000 weapons were slipped into Mexico from the U.S.

"The iron river of weapons transiting from the United States to Mexico and Central America that empowers criminal organizations and accelerates forced migration originates from hundreds of gun manufacturers and passes through thousands of local U.S. gun dealers, every year," the group said. "In reaction to the flow of illicit weapons, a firearms race has developed, in which gun companies export more and increasingly militarized weapons to Mexican police and military forces."

"Political discourse focuses on the U.S.-Mexico border," the group added. "But the unregulated, massive and militarized U.S. gun market that feeds the violence, drug trafficking, and displacement is growing – and often ignored."

The release of ATF data was the result of a three-year legal battle. In March 2021, John Lindsay-Poland, the coordinator for Stop US Arms to Mexico filed a freedom of information request, asking for copies of the agency's aggregated data on the number of firearms traced from Mexico and Central America to the U.S. since 2014, including the type of firearm, caliber and manufacturer. He also sought the zip codes and counties where these weapons were purchased.

ATF balked at the request, based on the Tiahrt Amendment, a rider attached to the 2003 appropriation bill blocking the release of firearms tracing data to anyone outside of law enforcement, making the agency's database a "black box," the Trace reported.

However, U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen ruled the Tiahrt Amendment could not withhold aggregate information, and ATF turned over the information on May 10, 2024.

Flow of guns linked to migration Stop US Arms also connected the influx of people across the U.S.-Mexico border to the unrelenting flow of firearms. They said around 2 million people left Mexico for the U.S., and said a recent survey of migrants seeking asylum at the U.S. border showed more than half had experienced "persistent and unrelenting gunfire” before arriving to the U.S. "This isn’t new. A 2017 study found that two-thirds of migrants in Mexico experienced violence," the group said, adding more than 379,000 people were forced to flee their homes as a result of violent conflict.

In November, battles between rival members of the Sinaloa Cartel forced hundreds of people to flee their homes in Sasabe, Sonora, InSight Crime reported. And just before Christmas an Arizona man was shot twice when he was caught in crossfire between rivals in Oquitoa, Sonora, the Arizona Republic reported.

Activists and migrants said they heard gun fire rattle through the night in the desert miles east of Sasabe where hundreds set up a small ad-hoc camp through the winter.

Cartel groups have pushed hard to equip themselves with heavier weapons, outclassing local police and military units by using .50-caliber sniper rifles and grenade launchers. Further, as USA Today reported last week, one cartel member said they gained access to shoulder-fired missiles, including the FGM 148 Javelin, an American-made infrared-guided missile designed to destroy armored vehicles.

Frustrated, Mexico launches twin lawsuits Data from the ATF shows Mexican officials have recovered at least 800 .50-caliber sniper rifles, including 100 recovered in 2023 alone. The group focused on these weapons, among semi-automatic rifles, because they can fire at targets nearly a mile away and shoot down police helicopters. "They have no legitimate use for community members in the United States - or in Mexico, where they are a weapon of choice for criminal organizations that use them to grow their violent business," the group said.

Most of these were produced by the Tennessee-based Barrett Firearms, one of seven gun manufacturers facing a $10 billion lawsuit from the Mexican government. Mexican officials filed suit in 2021 arguing the companies—including Barrett, Smith & Wesson, Beretta, Colt, Glock and Ruger—earn $170 million in sales annually by shipping guns to corrupt dealers who will help traffic the guns across the U.S. into Mexico through straw buyers—people who purchase weapons on someone else's behalf.

Further, the Mexican government argued Colt Manufacturing tailors three .38 caliber pistols for the Mexican market, including the "Emiliano Zapata 1911" which includes the phrase "It is better to die standing than live on your knees" often attributed to the eponymous Mexican revolutionary.

As the Mexican government noted in their suit, a Colt .38-caliber pistol was used to murder the well-known investigative journalist Miroslava Breach Velducea in 2017.

The Mexican government also launched a separate lawsuit in Arizona against five stores in the state— Diamondback Shooting Sports, SnG Tactical, Ammo AZ, Sprague's Sports and The Hub—arguing they "systematically participate in trafficking military-style weapons and ammunition to drug cartels in Mexico by supplying gun traffickers."

Supported by lawyers with Tucson-based firm DeConcini McDonald Yetwin & Lacy, the suit is the first brought by a sovereign nation against U.S. gun dealers. The suit argues the stores "know or should know that their reckless and unlawful business practices – including straw sales, and bulk and repeat sales of military-style weapons – supply dangerous criminals in Mexico and the U.S."

In one case, a former college student was sentenced to 21 months in prison in February for buying at least 15 weapons—including AK-47-style weapons and a .50-caliber sniper rifle—for a former State Department driver who smuggled the weapons into Mexico. He was paid $1,000 for each purchase, and over a few months, he bought multiple weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Since last October, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have intercepted 3,245 weapons at the border, as well as more than 633,000 rounds of ammunition. They've also intercepted nearly 50,000 "gun parts," which includes upper and lower receivers for AR-15s, as well as auto-sears.

The lower receiver houses internal components, including the firing mechanism, and is what federal officials classify as the "firearm" itself for semi-automatic rifles. Because this part is integral to making the weapon, it is controlled more strictly than other AR-15 parts, and unlike dozens of other components, buying one requires filing out a federal form.

Meanwhile, auto-sears—a small cluster of metal and springs—can modify semi-automatic weapons to fire automatically. The ATF has said adding this part to some AR-15s can "convert such rifles into machine guns," and unregistered auto sears are prohibited under federal law.

In Mexico, the Army is the sole authorized importer and legal seller of firearms, and during the Trump administration, the oversight for arms exports shifted from the State Department to the Commerce Department. During the first 16 months of the change, Commerce Department officials approved $16 bullion in firearms sales to Mexico, a 30 percent increase, said Stop US Arms to Mexico.

Receipts show the Mexican military sold U.S.-exported weapons to police, "including state and local police in Tamaulipas, Guerrero, Chihuahua, and other states with extensive documented records of state violence and corruption."

ARMAS Act In 2021, the Government Accountability Office pushed federal officials to improve how data on recovered firearms is shared between ATF and Homeland Security Investigations, a part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The GAO found 70 percent of the firearms recovered in Mexico during a four-year period came from the U.S., however ATF's data for thousands of firearms is incomplete, the GAO said, because weapons recovered by state law enforcement officers in Mexico may not be submitted to the ATF.

The GAO also said ATF has not given ICE access to data for about 56,000 firearms recovered in Mexico, adding that "additional data and analysis could enhance U.S. efforts to understand firearms sources and smuggling routes."

Stop US Arms to Mexico said the U.S. could stop the flow of weapons in two ways—by prohibiting the sale of semi-automatic rifles and .50-caliber rifles favored by the cartels under the Assault Weapons Ban and Stop Arming Cartels Act in Congress, and by creating a strategy to cut down on cross-border gun trafficking.

The group said the ARMAS Act—Americas Regional Monitoring of Arms Sales—introduced last year by Democratic Reps. Joaquin Castro, Norma Torres, Dan Goldman and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick could help these issues.

"A gun purchased in the United States is as likely to be used to murder someone in Mexico and other nations of Latin America as in the United States itself. The ARMAS Act will finally move the federal government to concretely address the overwhelming impacts of the U.S. gun market south of the border," said Lindsay-Poland in a published statement.

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Source link : https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/070124_stop_arms_report/ Author : Publish date : 2024-07-01 20:29:06 Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source .

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More than 2,000 guns recovered in Mexico & Central America linked to Pima County firearms dealers

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