Feds arrest Arizona buyers of guns for drug cartels

much to cut off those supply routes — but in a sign of how seriously federal officials are taking the gun-trafficking problem, Melson also said Friday that the agency received $37.5 million permanently to operate similar teams in several cities around the country, including Sierra Vista in southeastern Arizona.

Teams of ten ATF agents will target gun trafficking in Atlanta, Dallas, Las Vegas, Oklahoma City, and Brownsville, Texas. “This is not the end of it,” Melson said.

Sierra Vista, a city of about 40,000 less than twenty miles from the Mexican border, was chosen because of its location between two border checkpoints and the Sinaloa cartel’s activity there, Melson said, although the presence of cartel members hardly makes Sierra Vista unique. “The cartels have a presence in cities all over the U.S.,” he said.

The permanent ATF gun-trafficking operations will not be the size and scope of the concerted efforts in Houston and Phoenix, but the investigative techniques will be similar.

The operation required the cooperation of Mexican authorities, who supplied ATF agents with information on firearms seized at crime scenes there.

Court records indicate the guns purchased in Arizona came from federally licensed firearms dealers throughout the state, including some who sell them at the Arizona State Fair.

The suspects arrested in the operation had filled out forms to purchase guns from the gun dealers. Agents used the serial numbers of weapons discovered at crime scenes in Mexico to trace the guns back to their dealers and, ultimately, the purchaser, who typically did not have prior felonies.

Two Mesa men, Alejandro Medrano, 23, and Hernan Ramos, 22, have already received federal prison sentences of nearly four years for supplying 112 high-powered weapons to members of the Sinaloa cartel.

Melson conceded that the tactic for targeting gun traffickers is reactive: It requires a weapon to have been recovered at a crime scene and definitively traced to a licensed firearms dealer before the investigators can identify the buyers.

He said, however, that the seven nationwide outposts that are part of ATF’s new initiative will allow agents to discern trafficking patterns and create relationships with weapons dealers that should lead to more arrests and prosecutions before the guns are used to commit crimes.

Regardless of what those investigations produce in the years to come, Burke, the federal prosecutor, said concerted operations like the one that wrapped up in Phoenix last month should send a message to someone who considers illegally purchasing a gun for a criminal. “This is a deadly, deadly business,” Burke said. “They think it’s like buying beer for an underage kid - but it’s not.”