80 percent of guns seized in Mexico come from US

INTERVIEW / Colby Goodman

There are no photos, but earlier this week the author and the editor of a new report on gun trafficking across the US border into Mexico met in with 40 congressional staffers to discuss their findings in a closed room inside the House of Representatives, in Washington. The meeting was off limits to the press, and it was an end result of research that took Colby Goodman and his coauthor Michel Marizco from the  University of San Diego's Woodrow Wilson Institute, across the border into Mexican towns assailed with skyrocketing homicide rates, where the press has been bullied into silence. Goodman and Marizco spoke to Mexican authorities and ATF agents in the field and in Washington, the team looked at new reams of data available on firearms that have fed the spike of gun violence across the border over the past two years.

In “U.S. Firearms Trafficking to Mexico: New Data and Insights Illuminate Key Trends and Challenges” the authors cite an estimated 28,000 people were killed drug related violence in Mexico over the past four years, but most of them over the last two years. Over two thousand members of Mexican law enforcement were killed in the same period.

Goodman and Marizco point out that in the same period of the escalating violence, the guns seized by authorities in Mexico were overwhelmingly bought in the United States, and they are assault weapons. “In May 2010, the Mexican government said that of the 75,000 firearms seized in the past three years, about 80%, or 60,000 firearms came from the United States.” And still according to the report: “The top two firearms purchased in the United States and recovered in Mexico over the past three years were, in order, AK-47 type semi-automatic rifles and AR-15 semi-automatic rifle clones. The Romanian manufactured AK-47 rifle and the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle clone have been particularly popular.”

Closer interaction between both governments has led to an unprecedented amount of information tracing guns seized in empty warehouses, on the back of cars and on crime scenes in Mexico leading back to across the U.S. border. Data on tens of thousands of weapons have been sent by Mexico to the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, the ATF just this year. The serial numbers and import stamps on the bodies of military style firearms tell the story of assault weapons sold to private individuals standing for unknown third parties in gun shows and gun stores in the US; the so-called straw men.

Comunidad Segura interviewed Colby Goodman, 37, a researcher in public policy who is hopeful the new data will press for a more aggressive stance on the part of policy makers and law enforcement on this “huge issue not getting the attention it ought to get”.

Mexican drug violence has peaked over the past two years, out of a longer 7 year period. This seems to coincide with a greater number of assault weapons being bought in the US gun market. Is there a connection here?

I think there is a connection. Some things are connected with the more general availability of military style assault weapons in the US, (civilian versions of the M16 or the AR-15 and semi-automatic version of the AK-47, semi automatic versions of the .50 caliber BMG and now the FN 5.7 armor piercing pistols, nicknamed 'cop-killers').

The ending of the ban on sales of assault weapons to private individuals two years ago made such purchases a lot easier, it is one component of this increase in drug violence.

In connection with that, there have been a lot of imports of AK-47 semi automatic weapons and AK-47 part kits, so there has been an increase in supply, an increase in sales of military style rifles in the US.

Have gun imports into the US increased?

There are more military style firearms in the US and there have been an increase in the importation of military style weapons from outside the country. This has happened since the second president Bush, 2002.

There is a current ban on importing firearms not used for sports purposes. That ban was initially placed during the government of the first president Bush and was eased since during the second president Bush. There are people who see that lack of enforcement of that ban over the second president Bush contributed to more firearms in the US.

What other components are there to the surge in gun violence?

I do think that one of the reasons that there has been an increase in demand for firearms is the increase among the DTO organizations in Mexico. Unfortunately, one of the results of the Mexican strategy to suppress organized crime is that they cut off their heads. As a result, instead of there being just a few drug trafficking organizations, they splintered and now there are many, engaging in an arms race among themselves. They want more sophisticated firearms to have an advantage over their rivals.

When we talk about guns bought in America that turn up in Mexico, they could have been manufactured somewhere else?

Exactly.  The most popular firearm purchased in the US and recovered by Mexican authorities in Mexico (over the last three years) was the Romarm semi-automatic AK-47 made in Romania.

ATF data on Firearms recovered in Mexico, in 2009, by type

 

Is there hype or is the surge in the number of victims in Mexico over the last two years a fact?

Absolutely, one thing that the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center talks about is that there has been a huge increase in violence in the Mexican side of the border region, and there has also been increased violence in the middle of the country as well. But the homicide rate overall, while higher than the US for example, is not so incomparable to other countries in Central America such as Guatemala and El Salvador.

Is it a mitigating factor to compare the Mexican homicide rate to its neighbors?

No, it does not diminish the problem for Mexicans. The fact that the homicide rate is now comparable to those countries does not mean it is not a huge problem, it clearly is. The rate rose dramatically, the attacks have been especially brutal and it affects the society in dramatic ways that do not necessarily affect Guatemala and El Salvador similarly.

The Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol and Firearms, ATF, receives data from Mexico. Is there a Mexican data bank on firearms seized?

The best source is the CENAPI (National Center for Analysis, Planning, and Intelligence) but they are not very public about a lot of things. It is difficult to find information on the web for example. I tried to make public information requests; it was funny because I could get no information that way. By meeting with Mexican government officials I got more information.

How are these military style weapons bought in the US?

Legally you need to be a US citizen or resident; however there are not a lot of requirements for buying such guns. Gun stores are supposed to make a background check on purchasers in order to sell a gun, but in gun fairs, sellers must ask themselves whether buyers look foreign or suspicious, there is no requirement to ask to It’s or to verify information given.

Are Mexican citizens just as free to buy assault weapons?

No, you are not allowed to have anything higher than a .22 caliber firearm. Na AK-47 or an M-16 are illegal.

How have relations between Mexican authorities and US authorities changed to make more information available?

I wrote a paper on this for FLACSO, in 2007 and it seemed to me that the Mexican authorities at the time were expressing frustration with the US laws, (wanting them to be changed) but there was no real effort to try to cooperate with the US government in ways that the US government could deal with the problem. 

I think what the increase in violence and its recognition by some Mexican officials has led to change; they have been providing the ATF with a lot of information on the firearms that they have seized in the last few years. That has improved ATF information and understanding of the trafficking from the US to Mexico.

How has the information been provided to the ATF over the past couple of years?

What happens is when a firearm is seized in, say, the Mexican state of Chihuahua, local authorities will collect information on the firearms, and relay it to the Mexican attorney in Mexico city and at some point the Mexican Attorney’s office, the PGR (Procuradoría General de la Republica) pipes that into a computer and ATF gets the information. This is the most common way the information is transferred on a regular basis, a weekly basis or whatever.

On the other hand since there is an urgency to get the information, the Mexican military has also sent extensive lists covering a longer period, (it could cover a two year period with some 60,000 entries on an excel list when the ATF receives it).

US ATF agents trained Mexican police officers across Mexico in identifying and compiling information on guns seized. What are the difficulties in the process? 

This is a debate within Mexico, ATF officials have focused on crime labs in all the different Mexican states, there is a form to be filled out that is not difficult at all, the difficulty is in training police officers in how to identify type of firearm and what information and coding needs to be recorded depending on the type of weapon found.

There are of course, errors, cases of overlapping information, incomplete serial numbers or a failure to note the import stamp number on firearms bought into the US.

Unfortunately Mexican authorities were not adding the import number in thousands of cases. In other cases there were double entries, in other cases the weapon was wrongly identified, it wasn’t a firearm but it was ammunition, magazines, a shell… These things happen.

Did you have easy access to information on the US side of the border?

I was in Juarez, Arizona, California, Texas, and Tijuana on a few day visits. My co author went to Sonora, Hermosilho, Tijuana and Juarez on separate visits. I had an easier time getting information from ATF agents in the field that in getting them from ATF here in Washington DC. But generally it was not too difficult. There were problems when I was about to release the report (his paper) the public affairs information was a bit concerned… with releasing some of the information.

What is the issue?

The issue is that the ATF has decided to take a non public stance in terms of domestic guns issue in the US, focusing a strategy of attacking the criminals in the US. While there are groups in the US who say the firearms trafficking issue is not a big deal, that the percentage of guns smuggled are small. In other words, the gun lobby would like to minimize the border gun trafficking problem so as to avoid legal constraints on their market.

Why would the ATF be concerned with this?

I don’t understand this fully myself. I have argued that it is important for ATF to provide this data because it helps Congress and the public to understand what is really happening. But they have chosen to take a back seat instead of more readily providing this data for the American public.

Oddly, it’s not just ATF. For an issue that is conceivably a very important topic to work on, there are very few academics or policy makers working on this issue. It can be frustrating and slightly depressing because here we have a huge issue not getting the attention it ought to get.

I think one of the reasons is that they know how difficult it is to have change in domestic gun regulations in the US. You know, during the Bush administration the NRA increased in power and influence, they got increasingly what they wanted. So you can see how people would want to focus on other aspects.

Although the ATF is analyzing gun trafficking data and this week it announced operations on the border, is it fair to say that the Mexican government is cracking down much more vehemently on illegal weapons than the US on its own side of the border?

In some ways yes, and in some ways, no. The Mexican authorities are seizing a lot more firearms in Mexico than the US government is in the US for example, but there are tons more firearms in illegal hands in Mexico. I don't have official data on this, but the US government is without a doubt convicting more firearms traffickers than the Mexican government is. Basically, both the Mexican and US government needs to prioritize the issue more and improve upon its current efforts.

Your report is part of a bigger project?

Two institutions supported this report, the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Trans-border Institute of the University of San Diego. It's part of the bigger project of the Woodrow Wilson institute on US and Mexico security cooperation about drug trafficking. Generally it is focusing on organized crime, because that is the big security issue right now.

Read Further:

The report: "U.S. Firearms Trafficking to Mexico: New Data and Insights Illuminate Key Trends and Challenges (PDF)"

 

ATF Project Gunrunner

From Mexico Evalua:
Data on Mexico's different homicide rates (PDF)