Study Finds United States Gun Control Policy No Longer a Domestic Issue The Voice of Russia
go to original February 4, 2014

A giant billboard made of confiscated firearms was erected in 2012 in Ciudad Juárez near the border with the United States. (Raymundo Ruiz/Associated Press)

Mexico, a state with highly restrictive gun laws, minimal arms manufacturing, and only one gun shop in the entire country, is awash in firearms, many of them from the US. A study published by the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego estimates that upward to a quarter-million weapons are purchased in the US and smuggled into Mexico annually.

Amid the hyperviolence of Mexico's war on drugs, this southward flow of illicit arms has evoked consternation and pleas for reform of U.S. gun policy from officials and activists on both sides of the Rio Grande. But others say curbing the illicit trafficking of American arms will have little effect on the complex network of violence that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Mexicans in the past few years.

Scattered along the US side of the 2,000-mile border are 6,700 licensed gun shops, convenient, if unwitting, supply points for illicit firearms that are loaded into trucks that daily trundle over the bridge past the no-weapons billboard and into Mexico.

The country is experiencing an epidemic of gun violence. After years in decline, Mexico's homicide rate tripled during the Calderón presidency (2007-12). Up to 121,000 persons were murdered.

How many of those firearms originate in the US is a question that interests Topher McDougal, an associate professor of economic development at the University of San Diego's Kroc School of Peace Studies.

Previous studies of US gun flow into Mexico made estimates based on weapons seized at the border, but McDougal said there was no way of knowing what percentage of the total flow those catchments represented.

So, his institutes' study found that as many as 253,000 guns are annually trafficked into Mexico, representing about 2.2 percent of the total demand for US-sold firearms. The weapons, typically bought in the US through "straw men" purchases and then carted south, provided $127 million annually in revenue between 2010-2012 to U.S. gun dealers and arms manufacturers, who are "literally making a killing," said McDougal. Sever the Mexico supply route and 47 percent of all US licensed firearms dealers would go out of business, according to the report.

McDougal's estimate is much higher than previous totals based on guns ret

The ability to prevent arms trafficking is complicated by various US gun laws restricting the collection and publication of information on how a gun is acquired. The government is prohibited from storing records of individual gun purchases and can only trace and publicize limited aggregate data on weapons retrieved at a crime scene. Revealing the location of the original retailer, for example, is not allowed.

To get around these obstacles, Trans-Border Institute researchers advise providing information on gun sales tax revenues at the county level, which would give a fairly detailed estimate of guns sold in shops along the border. Any unusual uptick in sales would alert law enforcement officials to investigate. The researchers also recommend prohibiting cash transactions for guns, creating a Mexican firearms database, and developing a background check that would vet for straw purchasers.

"To simply require a 'clean record' is inadequate," McDougal said, "because people who are hired to purchase arms for a third party are hired for their record. Even if Congress were to adopt a universal background check, this wouldn't prevent straw purchases because you have no way of knowing if the purchaser is going to resell the gun."

See the original at The Voice of Russia

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