AZMex: AZMEX EXTRA 19-10-11

AZMEX EXTRA 19 OCT 2011

Note: Interesting background stuff, but continue to be bothered by
the pattern of very light sentences for arms smugglers. Also an
article of faith in these here parts that stolen things, farm &
construction equipment, cars, guns, trucks usually end up down south.

U.S. gun sales to Mexico: A preview of today from Tucson's news in 1997
Story
(0) Comments
Tim Steller, Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Wednesday, October 19, 2011
12:15 pm | Comments

In 1997, Hector Leal Hernandez shows the scars from surgery after
being shot during a robbery. Hector was working at Joyeria Apis, a
jewelry store in Nogales, Sonora, when he was shot in the chest.
American guns in Mexico were a big issue even then, 12 years before
Operation Fast and Furious began.
1997 Sidebar: Moving guns across border isn't difficult

American guns play big role in Mexican crimes
Tucson, Phoenix rank high as sources of smuggled arms
By Tim Steller, Arizona Daily Star
NOGALES, Sonora - Hector Leal Rodriguez sensed the gunman letting his
guard down.
The robber, one of a pair, was cornering Leal and his parents in the
back of their Nogales, Sonora, jewelry store on Dec. 1. He pointed
his .38-caliber revolver toward the floor.
"I saw an opportunity to take it, and I thought he was going to shoot
anyway," Leal said. So he lunged for the gun.
But he couldn't wrest it away and the attacker fired a bullet that
passed through Leal's chest, an inch from his heart, and out his
lower back. The bullet miraculously missed all of Leal's vital organs
and caused only minor injuries.
The armed attack was one of the latest in a growing number of such
crimes in Nogales, incidents that have made public safety the No. 1
concern in the city. The local problem is part of a larger public
safety crisis that grips Mexico, armed in large part with American guns.
In Mexico, the 1996 firearms homicide rate was about 10 per 100,000,
compared to 7 per 100,000 in the United States, according to figures
from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
No one knows for certain whether the gun used to shoot Leal came from
the United States. But Leal assumes so, and it stands to reason.
Mexico's laws strictly regulate the possession of firearms, putting
their registration in the hands of the military. It's hard for a
Mexican to legally own a higher-powered weapon than a .38-caliber
handgun.
You won't find a legal gun shop in Nogales or anywhere else in
Mexico. But there are 17,875 federally licensed firearms dealers in
the four American states that border Mexico. Nor are there licensed
firearm manufacturers in Mexico, but the United States has 1,041 of
them.
With the vast discrepancy between looser U.S. laws and stricter
Mexican regulations, firearms flow from the United States south to
meet Mexico's demand.
"It's a tremendous problem," said Sigberto Celaya, special agent in
charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms' Tucson office.
"People in the U.S. don't realize how many guns are going into
Mexico. The Mexican government has been finding these guns for years
and complaining to the U.S."
A common source
Tucson appears to be one of Mexico's main sources of firearms.
During the three years that ended in September, the ATF received
thousands of requests to trace firearms seized in Mexico.
The bureau could find a U.S. origin for about 10 percent of those
firearms; almost all the rest were untraceable. Of the traceable
arms, Tucson was the second-most-common source; 4 percent of the arms
traced came from the city. Houston, at 5 percent, was the most common
source; Phoenix was third at 3 percent.
The same organizations that bring illegal narcotics to the United
States ship firearms south, Celaya said. Often they use a local
person as a "straw man" to buy firearms here legally, then transport
the guns south in a vehicle.
It isn't a new pattern. In 1988, police in Agua Prieta, Sonora,
seized a load of 100 AK-47 assault rifles that apparently were part
of a drugs-for-guns exchange. Police seized 11 tons of marijuana
headed north on the same day.
But those who take firearms across the border without declaring them
- a federal crime in Mexico and the United States - usually carry
just one or two, said Eleno Olvera Baez, the administrator of
Mexico's Nogales Customs office.
"What many people do . . . is take a risk with the selecting
mechanism," Olvera said. That mechanism signals a green light to most
people but a red light to about 1 in 5, whose vehicle then must be
inspected by Mexican Customs officers.
Olvera said he believes the firearms and ammunition that inspectors
seize represent a small fraction of the total that crosses the border
in Nogales. In 1996, 128 firearms were confiscated at the Nogales
ports of entry, along with 26,522 rounds of ammunition. Through
November this year, inspectors at Nogales seized 100 firearms and
44,463 rounds.
This year the inspectors didn't necessarily catch even one out of
five firearms that crossed the border. Customs officers began
inspecting more frequently - doubling the number from 1 in 10
vehicles - and thoroughly at the end of November, after a shootout at
the Nogales port of entry.
Simple transactions
It is a simple matter for those who want to buy arms or ammunition
here and take them to Mexico, as several local criminal cases show.
ATF agents followed Gabriel Arturo Camargo Vega and arrested him just
before he was to have taken a load of guns into Mexico at Nogales. He
was convicted of exporting munitions in 1989.
But this month they arrested Camargo again on charges that he
illegally purchased 13 firearms at two Tucson gun shops. All he did
to get the guns was allegedly lie on federal forms, saying he wasn't
a felon. ATF agents believe the guns went to Mexico.
But Camargo's alleged illegal purchases were more complex than
necessary for arms traffickers, said Nimer F. Ganem, who owns the
Cash Box Jewelry and Pawn Co., where Camargo bought 10 firearms in 1992.
"They get 'em through the newspaper," Ganem said. "They get 'em
through swap meets and gun shows."
At the Cash Box, Camargo had to present identification and fill out
ATF Form 4473 to purchase the firearms. That form is not required of
non-dealers. By law, those who sell firearms informally, not as a
livelihood, don't have to verify the buyer's residency, age or
criminal status. But some small-scale gun sellers say they check
identification anyway.
"I'm scared they're going to Mexico," said Dave Southard, who was
advertising a Smith & Wesson .45-caliber handgun and other firearms
in the newspaper. He added that, in any given sale, "if I had the
slightest suspicion that the gun was going to Mexico, I would
probably say it's already sold."
"On any street, it's easy"
Despite the strict regulation of firearms in Mexico, Nogales, Sonora,
residents say it is usual to see them and easy to buy them. That's
especially true in the poor, often violent neighborhoods along the
U.S. border.
"It's common to see somebody carrying a firearm without a permit for
it," said Margarita Hernandez, working the counter at a store on
Calle Buenos Aires. The street serves as an entrance to the hilltop
Colonia Buenos Aires, a notorious area just east of the downtown port
of entry.
How easy would it be to buy a gun? "On any street, it's easy,"
Hernandez said.
Leal, the shooting victim, said he believes that about half the
households in his neighborhood have firearms, many of them illegal.
Nogales Mayor Wenceslao Cota Montoya said there are no statistics on
the presence of guns in the city.
"But experience has shown that firearms are proliferating," said
Cota, a former Sonora attorney general.
In Sonora in 1996, the murder rate was about 35 per 100,000 people,
according to figures provided by the state Attorney General's Office.
In Arizona in 1995, the rate was 10.4 murders per 100,000 people.
Mexico's violence is occurring not just along the border but also
across the country, especially in Mexico City. In southern Mexico,
the insecurity appears in the form of sporadic guerrilla war. On
Monday, gunmen in Chiapas state massacred 45 residents of a rural
village.
Still, not all the guns are going to criminals, said Olvera, the
Customs official. Some are going to protect residents from the
increasingly well-armed criminals in a small-scale arms race.
"I think the guns that pass through the Nogales area are going for
the defense of the family," he said.
Arms policies toughen
After U.S. Customs agents in March stopped a major illegal shipment
of grenade launchers and automatic rifles into Mexico, the Mexican
government increased pressure for action against arms trafficking.
Progress has occurred on several fronts:
* Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and President Clinton signed an
Organization of American States convention against illicit arms
trafficking in November, during Zedillo's visit to Washington.
The agreement requires, among other actions, that firearms
manufacturers throughout the Western Hemisphere mark their products
with their name, place of manufacture and serial number. It also
requires OAS members to have a single contact person for arms-
trafficking matters.
* The Mexican and U.S. governments came to a separate agreement that
makes it easier for the ATF to trace weapons seized in Mexico. Since
1996, the ATF has trained 60 Mexican officials in firearm
identification and tracing techniques.
* Clinton announced new regulations that require aliens to prove
residency for 90 days in their state before purchasing a firearm.
Determining who is an alien is left to the firearms dealers.
* The U.S. Customs Service also carries out occasional inspections of
outbound vehicles. But those have not been so successful in detecting
guns, said John Howe, acting special agent in charge of the service's
Tucson office.
"When we do our out-bounds, right after we start them, the word gets
out. Anything that's headed south stops," Howe said. He added that
the agency's budget doesn't allow for permanent outbound inspections.
Sonoran cops trying harder
Nogales, officials have ratcheted up their own efforts to detect
arms, particularly since the Nov. 23 shootout. That day, 10 minutes
of gunfire over seized money left a Mexican Customs inspector dead.
The Tucson ATF is attempting to trace three weapons used in the
attack - an AK-47 rifle, a .357-caliber revolver and a .38-caliber
pistol.
Nogales police and other law-enforcement officials, including the
army, have set up checkpoints largely to look for unregistered
firearms, said Cota, the mayor. They have concentrated on a few
neighborhoods, including Buenos Aires.
But many doubt that law enforcement can slow Mexico's arms
proliferation while there are such broad differences in firearms
laws. And people like Hernandez, in the Colonia Buenos Aires, expect
the atmosphere of insecurity to persist.
"You can't do anything about it anymore," she said. "Violence has
already won despite the best intentions of the people."

1997 Sidebar: Moving guns across border isn't difficult

Posted: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 12:30 pm | Comments
http://azstarnet.com/article_1bcd0374-fa86-11e0-8167-001cc4c002e0.html

In this story, a sidebar to the story from Nogales, Sonora, I
detailed a few cases of gun or ammunition smuggling that ATF made in
the 1990s
By Tim Steller, Arizona Daily Star
A pair of Tucson cases show how simple it can be to transport guns or
ammunition to Mexico.
Gabriel Arturo Camargo Vega was convicted in 1989 of trafficking arms
from Tucson to Mexico and was re-arrested on firearms charges by
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents this month.
"We had at that time set up a surveillance in Tucson and followed him
from gun store to gun store, and watched him pack away guns in the
shell of a camper," said Sigberto Celaya, special agent in charge of
the ATF's Tucson office.
U.S. Customs and ATF agents arrested Camargo at Nogales as he
approached the border.
After his release from prison, Camargo allegedly went back to buying
guns in Tucson, and Celaya thinks it was for the cross-border trade.
A federal grand jury indicted Camargo in 1994 for lying on gun-
purchase forms on 10 occasions at Jensen's Custom Ammunition and the
Cash Box Jewelry and Pawn Co. At the two Tucson stores, Camargo
bought two .223-caliber rifles, a .22-caliber pistol, three 9 mm
pistols, five .22-caliber rifles, a 30-30 caliber rifle and an AK-47
rifle.
He allegedly lied on his firearms forms by not admitting to his
felony conviction for arms trafficking. An arrest warrant went out
for Camargo in 1994, but ATF agents didn't catch him until Dec. 3,
when they arrested him at a westside garage where he was working.
Camargo no longer possessed any of the weapons that he was indicted
for purchasing, Celaya said.
"Those made it to somewhere, and we believe Mexico," Celaya said.
Camargo, who is in Tucson's federal prison, declined an interview
request.
Carrying ammunition into Mexico without declaring it is also a crime.
In June, a friend asked Jeffrey J. McCarrie to take the friend's
truck into Mexico at Nogales and wait for him there, according to a
criminal complaint against McCarrie filed in Tucson's federal court.
McCarrie told police the friend told McCarrie not to ask what was in
the truck. When the friend didn't show up in Mexico after three
hours, McCarrie allegedly drove back into the United States. U.S.
Customs agents inspected the truck and found 10,000 rounds of
ammunition in a secret compartment along with 2 grams of
methamphetamine, an indictment says.
Federal prosecutors dropped a charge of attempting to export
ammunition in September when McCarrie pleaded guilty to possession of
methamphetamine. The terms of the plea agreement are sealed.

Read more: http://azstarnet.com/article_1bcd0374-
fa86-11e0-8167-001cc4c002e0.html#ixzz1bG1k3AHw

AZMex

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

AZMEX EXTRA 19-10-11

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