Scanning the headline from our sister newspaper, we were tempted to ask, “What’s the problem?” After all, the alleged gun-smuggling miscreants reside in a state whose governor has chided his fellow Texans for not owning as many guns as their California counterparts. They live in a state where guns are ubiquitous; in stores, in shops, in restaurants, even at church, people are packing heat. (That gospel singer reminds us of a campaign ad then-Attorney General Greg Abbott ran a few years back, the one where he urged his fellow Texans to get more familiar with two things: guns and the Bible. He’s an Abbott two-fer, so to speak.)
Again, what’s the problem? Don’t the people of Mexico have an even more urgent need than we do to arm themselves? From what we hear, several Mexican towns and cities are under siege by murderous drug cartels; law enforcement is outgunned (or in cahoots with the cartels). Applying the logic of Abbott and his fellow Second Amendment absolutists, it would seem that law-abiding Mexicans need every AR-15 they can get their hands on. Nearly 5,000 assault-style rifles would, in a small way, even the odds.
On second thought, we realized, of course, that those guns aren’t going to the defenseless besieged. They’re going to the cartels.
As it turns out, we Americans, we Texans, are their suppliers. We are major exporters, legal and otherwise, of military-style rifles into Mexico. As the Washington Post reported in a 2020 investigation, weapons from America are pouring into a country where “military drug cartels now command arsenals that rival the weaponry of the country’s security forces. In many cases, criminals outgun police.”
A Mexican government study found that roughly 2.5 million illicit American guns have surfaced in Mexico in the last dozen years. The weapon of choice is not necessarily the well-known AR-15 or the AK-47. It’s the .50-caliber rifle that shoots rounds the size of a cigar, a weapon that can hit targets from nearly 2 miles away. Traffickers in rural Michoacán used one a few years ago to shoot down a police helicopter.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, 70% of guns found at crime scenes in Mexico between 2014 and 2018 and submitted for tracing were sourced from the United States. Mexico — “so far from God, so close to the United States,” as the quote attributed to Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz goes — is a prime market for this country’s $21 billion gun and ammunition manufacturing industry.
“On Capitol Hill,” U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, noted in a speech last week, “my colleagues across the aisle will turn any conversation about immigration into a warning about the dangers of Mexican cartels, with vivid descriptions of brutal kidnappings and undeniably horrific violence. But in Mexico, there is only one gun store in the entire country. It’s nearly impossible for any civilian to get a gun. When the cartels need weapons, they don’t look within Mexico; they look north of the border, to gun shops in Houston, Dallas, Tucson and Deming.”
Arizona and Texas are the go-to states, ATF officials told the Post. “Ground zero,” the newspaper noted, is the Houston area. We are home to some 5,000 licensed gun stores and dealers. We offer smugglers a huge and unregulated informal market, including gun shows where people can sell guns as their “private collection” with no background check for the buyer. It’s no wonder that more weapons recovered in Mexico are traced to Houston and Harris County than anywhere else in the country.
“At a time when the United States is pushing Mexico to target cartels more aggressively,” the Post notes, “U.S. laws that make .50-calibers and other destructive weapons easy to buy, along with a lack of enforcement at the border, are enabling those groups to expand their influence and activities in the country.”
In other words, those smugglers Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vows to shoot “stone-cold dead” once he becomes president, are carrying made-in-America weapons. The phrase doesn’t translate well into Spanish so any Mexican politician threatening to shoot American gunrunners will need to coin their own.
Granted, Mexico has its own problems with drug interdiction and law enforcement, but they’re getting little help from this country. Our insatiable drug appetite makes for a huge market for Mexican narcotics traffickers, while the ready availability of American guns keep the cartels as well-armed as a small nation’s military force. “What if we did as little to stop drugs as you’re doing to stop guns?” Mexican Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval asked his American counterparts during a high-level meeting in 2020, as reported by the Post.
Consider the irony. Not only are the drug smugglers affiliated with the cartels armed with weapons they acquired from us, but the violence and chaos they ignite are driving out defenseless Mexican residents (as well as residents of other countries in the hemisphere). Faced with living — and dying — in merciless thrall to heavily armed gangs that murder, kidnap, torture and decapitate, it’s little wonder that desperate people are willing to risk their lives and the lives of their children on long, dangerous treks to this country. They’re defenseless victims of a vicious drugs-and-guns symbiosis.
Castro, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the Western Hemisphere, introduced relatively modest legislation earlier this month that’s designed to tighten gun-export regulations and break the deadly link between Mexican drug smuggling and American arms smuggling.
“Nearly four years ago, the Trump administration worked with the National Rifle Association to loosen gun export regulations and unleash a flood of American-made guns on the Western Hemisphere,” the San Antonio Democrat noted in a statement. “As we work with our allies and partners to address shared regional challenges, including forced migration and drug trafficking, Congress needs to address the role of U.S. gun exports in driving violence and instability abroad.”
Labeled the Americas Regional Monitoring of Arms Sales (ARMAS) Act, the legislation would reverse the Trump administration’s decision shortly before the former president left office to transfer authority over small-arms exports from the State Department to the Commerce Department. The NRA pushed for the transfer to allow gun manufacturers “to run more competitively among the global markets,” as they put it.
Castro maintains that Commerce is not equipped to enforce weapons-export laws and that the transfer has led to huge increases in arms sales throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, in tandem with political suppression, gang violence and human rights violations. His office told the Chronicle editorial board that, in addition to signing up a number of Democratic co-sponsors, he has held “productive talks” with his Republican colleagues about the ARMAS Act and expects these discussions to continue. “Disarming Mexican cartels shouldn’t be a partisan fight,” he said.
Meanwhile, the drug-smuggling duo from New Braunfels won’t be enjoying their ill-gotten gain, an estimated $3.5 million over a two-year period. As the two men learned in a court appearance last Thursday, they’re facing up to 20 years in prison.
One small consolation for the former gospel singer: A number of prisons around the country offer opportunities to join convict choirs.
Houston Chronicle
