At Mexico's Only Legal Gun Store, Even the Boss Discourages Gun Sales The Associated Press
go to original August 19, 2016

Inside Mexico's only gun store (Tech Insider)

There’s just one place in all of Mexico where you can legally buy a gun. It’s tucked away in an anonymous building on an army base in the capital, staffed by soldiers.

Those who enter must surrender any cell phones, tablets or cameras, remove caps and pass through a metal detector. Weapons are kept in locked glass cases, unlike many of the 50,000-plus U.S. gun shops where used-gun racks on showroom floors allow easy access and clerks are happy to let you heft an unloaded firearm.

Mexico’s constitution guarantees citizens’ right to own a handgun and hunting rifles for self-defense and sport. Legally getting your hands on one, however, requires clearing a series of bureaucratic hurdles far stricter than in the U.S. and, for many customers, traveling great distances to reach the country’s lone gun store.

In fact, most of Mexico’s 120 million inhabitants probably don’t even know about the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales – it’s prohibited from advertising any of its goods or the mere fact that it exists.

But that hasn’t stopped sales from booming, in parallel with a large and active black-market trade for contraband weapons flooding south from the U.S.

According to army records, the store sold 549 guns in 2000. For 2015, sales had risen to 10,115, an increase reflecting the rise in concern about personal safety during a surge in violent deaths in Mexico.

Sales spiked most dramatically after 2006, when then-President Felipe Calderon took office and declared war on Mexico’s drug cartels. The country recorded more than 164,000 killings between 2007 and 2014, according to official statistics.

... But unlike those who run U.S. gun shops, the store’s manager, Col. Eduardo Tellez Moreno, would rather no one buy what he’s selling.

Read the rest at KDWN

Related: To Combat Historic Murder Rate, Venezuela Crushes 2,000 Guns, Plans Registry of Bullets (The Huffington Post)

Related: Guns in America: Where the 2nd Amendment Is Not Up for Discussion (TakePart)

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