Mexico warLarge portion of firearms in Mexico's violence come from the U.S. government
In February 2009 President Obama said that “More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our border”; the president was right that most of the weapons used in the war among the cartels — and between the cartels and the Mexican government — come from the United States, but it now appears that they do not come from gun shows or mom and pop gun stores; rather, these weapons — many of them not even sold in guns stores — come from the U.S. government; the United States sells hundreds of millions of dollars worth of firearms to the Mexican government and the countries in Central America; corrupt officials in these countries prefer to sell these weapons to the Mexican cartels for a tidy profit rather than keep these weapons in their own armories and reserves
U.S. weapons turn up in cartel hands // Source: gunrightsmedia.com
It is often argued that most of the weapons being used in Mexico’s drug wars come from the United States, and that the relative ease with which firearms can be bought in the United States have led drug cartels to hire Americans with clean police records to go from gun show to gun show and buy weapons, then smuggle them to Mexico.
In February 2009 President Barack Obama said that “More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our border.” Obama’s assertion is difficult to ascertain because most of the weapons used in the war among the drug cartels, and between the cartel and the authorities, are never seized by the authorities and thus their origin cannot be verified.
Leaving the issue of U.S. gun shows and gun shops aside, a Fox News report offers a new perspective on the questions of U.S.-made weapons in Mexico. The report finds that, yes, most of the weapons used in Mexico’s war come from the United States – but, no, they do not come from gun shows or gun shops. Rather, they come from the U.S. government.
Many of these weapons — M26A2 fragmentation grenades, M16, U.S. military-issued ammunition — are not even sold in gun shows or gun shops. According to Fox News, these weapons come from three sources:
- U.S. Defense Department shipments to Latin America, known and tracked by the U.S. State Department as “foreign military sales.”
- Weapons ordered by the Mexican government, tracked by the State Department as “direct commercial sales.”
- Aging, but plentiful arsenals of military weapon stores in Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
A U.S. Department of State document shows that in 2009, the United States sold the Mexican government $177 million worth of arms, of which $20 million was used for semi- and fully automatic weapons.
Fox News quotes a cable released by Wikileak in which an informant who worked with U.S. federal agencies says that “The governments and military in those countries [Guatemala, Honduras, etc.] realize that the economy is such that they are far better off to push these weapons north and sell them than they are to keep them in their own arsenals and reserves.”
The Fox News report also cites a Small Arms Survey and a GAO report that offer figures which support this argument.
The answer to the question of whether or not most of the weapons used in the bloody war in Mexico come from the United States thus appears settled – most of the weapons indeed do. The new twist is that many of these weapons – the precise proportions is not known –do not come from gun shows or gun shops, but rather from the U.S. government’s own arsenals.
