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 Editorials | Issues | October 2007 
U.S. Guns Fuel Bloody Mexican Drug Wars
 Keach Hagey - CBS News
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The U.S. isn't the only country struggling with the effects of what's coming illegally over the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Washington Post reports that 100 percent of drug-related killings in Mexico are carried out with smuggled American weapons, according to Mexican police. About 2,000 enter Mexico each day, according to a Mexican government study.
The guns are "crucial tools in an astoundingly barbaric war between rival cartels that has cost 4,000 lives in the past 18 months and sent law enforcement agencies in Washington and Mexico City into crisis mode," the Post reports.
Officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms hope that some of the money will be used to give Mexican police chiefs greater access to U.S. databases for gun traces. Right now, the traces can only be made through federal police headquarters in Mexico City. That takes so long that many local cops don't bother.
They get into Mexico stuffed into the baggy pant legs or hidden in the trunks of "ants," or gunrunners - often aided by corrupt customs officials. The weapons are often bought legally at gun shows in Arizona and other border states where loopholes allow criminals to stock up without background checks.
Guns are now flooding into the country in part because of the cartel war, and in part because of the ease of buying high-powered weapons since the U.S. assault weapons ban was not renewed in 2004, according to an ATF official.
The American taxpayer must now mop up the bloody results of the ban's demise: President Bush has promised $500 million in U.S. aid to help Mexico battle drug cartels, who are formidable precisely because of their steady supply of AK-47s and grenade launchers that were made In the U.S.A. |
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