Mexico is in the grips of a deadly arms race. The vast majority of the country’s illegal firearms have been smuggled from the world's largest gun market: the United States. Reporter katelinthicum breaks down how this happens:
The sun had not yet risen when dozens of gunmen stormed into the town of Ocotito in southern Mexico and started shooting.tried to fight back, but his shotgun was no match for their assault rifles. So he and his family fled.
After Alanis was forced to abandon his property, which he had bought with savings from a stint as an auto mechanic in North Carolina, he went to state authorities for help. In the meantime, Alanis and his group — the United Front of Community Police of the State of Guerrero — have been steadily taking territory.
A resident of Mexico City examines the serial number on a handgun to make sure it matches the number on his registration. Data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also make clear where criminals in Mexico are getting their firearms. Experts, activists and Mexican officials trace the beginning of the arms race to a major change in U.S. gun regulations: the 2004 expiration of a congressional ban on high-powered assault weapons.
The increase came at a precarious time. Mexican drug traffickers had been openly clashing since 2000, when the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party lost power and the cartels lost crucial political protection.In 2004, a quarter of Mexico’s homicides were committed with a gun. Today, guns are to blame in 72% of killings.
Martinez well remembers the shock he felt in 2006 when he was called to investigate a shootout in the seaside resort of Acapulco that many viewed as a inflection point in the violence. But the influx of weapons had an unintended consequence: A better equipped military and police spurred the cartels to improve their arsenals, primarily by smuggling even more weapons from the U.S.
Eight months before he stepped down because of term limits, Calderon erected a massive billboard in the border city of Ciudad Juarez angled toward Texas. Enrique Peña Nieto, who succeeded Calderon as president, continued to hit on the issue of American guns in conversations with his U.S. counterparts. Yet seizures of illegal weapons fell precipitously during his six-year term, in part because he largely abandoned a Calderon-era push to inspect more vehicles heading south into Mexico.
A member of the United Front of Community Police of the State of Guerrero passes by a bullet-riddled home in Filo de Caballos.
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