| | |  Americas & Beyond | October 2009 
Guns from Houston Tied to 55 Mexico Deaths
 Dane Schiller - Houston Chronicle
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October 05, 2009
 |  | As long as we are the cheapest, easiest place to buy guns, they'll keep doing it.
- Dewey Webb, ATF |  | | |
Anti-cartel operation focuses on areas place in underworld crime
High-powered guns purchased at Houston-area stores by a Gulf Cartel cell and smuggled across the border for the syndicate's bloody warfare have been traced to at least 55 killings in Mexico, including the deaths of police officers, civilians and gangsters, federal agents said late last week.
The recent tracking of firearms is the result of a four-month anti-cartel operation focused largely on Houston, which the federal government contends is the No. 1 spot in the United States for buying guns that later are used in underworld massacres and other crimes in Mexico.
As long as we are the cheapest, easiest place to buy guns, they'll keep doing it, said Dewey Webb, head of the Houston division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which includes the Rio Grande Valley and reaches to Del Rio. These cartel armies want the best and newest available.
Deputy U.S. Attorney General David Ogden, who was in Houston to announce results of the operation, said the ATF was able to investigate a backlog of 700 requests from the Mexican government to trace the history of guns from crime scenes to their original purchasers in United States. Also, agents seized 141,440 rounds of ammunition and 443 firearms, according to the Justice Department.
Agents inspected gun dealer records and knocked on doors to ask people what happened to guns they purchased that ended up in Mexico. Among the cases that have yet to be resolved are those involving a small-town Texas policeman who bought a few military-style rifles, left them in his car and on the same night forgot to lock a door. He couldn't explain why he had not filed a police report or why he visited Mexico the next day.
The drugs flow north into our communities and contribute to violence here and harm public health and safety and we know weapons from the United States flow south and are used in these violent attacks.
The result of the Gun Runner Impact Team operation, which brought in 100 agents from around the country for temporary duty, is that 276 full-scale investigations were opened against weapons purchasers as well as a handful of firearms dealers.
As it is largely illegal to own firearms in Mexico, and the United States has top quality guns readily available, cartels have organized cells that recruit U.S. citizens with clean criminal backgrounds to try to purchase weapons without setting off red flags.
The 55 slayings were linked to a Gulf Cartel cell that authorities have been steadily dismantling. The deaths include 18 civilians or law enforcement personnel and 37 gangsters. The group's guns, which were often purchased in bulk quantity for cash, had previously been linked to murders, including the Acapulco Massacre of state police officers and secretaries.
In addition to going after gun purchasers, the operation took a look a dealers. ATF inspectors went through records of nearly 1,100 firearms dealers, resulting in 77 warning letters about compliance and one license revocation. Many problems were attributed to sloppy recording keeping.
If Santa Claus could bring everything on my wish list, we'd have a lot more folks on both sides of the border working on this, said Webb, the Houston ATF chief.
dane.schiller(at)chron.com
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