There are solely two gun shops in Mexico, and each are positioned on navy bases. But the nation nonetheless suffers from a significant gun murder downside. So the place are the weapons coming from?
In 2015, a Mexican navy helicopter was shot down by cartel fighters utilizing a Browning machine gun and a Barrett .50-caliber rifle. Each weapons have been traced again to authorized purchases in U.S. gun outlets. This stark instance highlights a brutal actuality: Mexico’s gun violence disaster is fueled by American weapons.
Mexico’s greatest problem is that it shares a border with a rustic the place nearly anybody can legally buy a gun. A big variety of these firearms are then trafficked throughout the border, primarily into the arms of violent drug cartels. In response to The Dialog, an estimated 135,000 weapons are smuggled yearly from the U.S. into Mexico.
The Dialog, in Mexican drug cartels use tons of of 1000’s of weapons purchased from licensed US gun outlets, has been investigating the stream of illicit weapons trafficked from the U.S. to Mexico. The map on the prime of this submit exhibits that almost all of the firearms trafficked to Mexico got here from cities and small cities which might be near the Mexican border. The article additionally options an interactive map exhibiting the widespread presence of drug cartels throughout Mexico. This visible information underscores that trafficked American weapons are contributing to violence in almost each area of the nation.
The gun violence disaster in Mexico can’t be absolutely understood with out acknowledging the function of the US as a significant supply of illicit firearms. Whereas Mexico maintains among the strictest gun management legal guidelines on the earth, they’re undermined by the simple availability of weapons simply throughout the border. This cross-border stream of weapons from the US empowers felony organizations, destabilizes communities, and fuels a cycle of violence that impacts each nations.
