AZMEX EXTRA 4 APR 2013
Mexican firearms imports for 2011 per UN.
http://www.un.org/disarmament/convarms/Register/
We find that Mexico reports importing over 25 thousand firearms for
the 2011 period.
Unknown if that includes BATFE exports. Several interesting things
appeared.
From the US:
2,103 pistols, mostly 9mm Sig-Sauer and Colt
3,440 rifles & carbines, mostly Colt, DS and Sig in 5.56x45 and
7.62.x51 .
Including 4 Barrett in .338
151 LMG from US Ord. 7.62x51
34 9mm Colt subguns
4,995 Misc. sporting firearms, mostly shotguns and bolt action
hunting rifles.
150 LAW M72A7 66 mm
From Italy:
7,045 9mm Beretta pistols
4,247 5.56x45 rifles, most likely Beretta ARX-160
303 9mm carbines Beretta
From Belgium:
125 FN Five-Seven pistols 5.7x28
700 FN Minis in 5.56x45
170 FN MAG58 in 7.62x51
83 FN in 7.62x51, listed as "machine pistols"
From Israel:
2,618 IWI rifles in 5.56x45
10 IWI rifles in 7.62x51
From Austria:
383 Glock pistols, various models
From Swiss:
200 assault rifles, mod unk.
From Portugal:
19 K4 grenade launchers 40mm
end
Note: have to consider the sources on this one. Not to forget the
tens of thousands imported by Mex. govt. and then many "transfered"
to cartels and other criminal gangs.
Report highlights issues with gun running into Mexico
Posted: Thursday, April 4, 2013 6:38 am
Julián Aguilar | Texas Tribune
http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/
article_9e1bdab0-9cb7-11e2-8a86-001a4bcf6878.html
As the gun control debate swirls around issues like background checks
and mental health, a new study reveals that gun running into Mexico
remains a large-scale problem.
In their report, titled "The Way of the Gun," researchers at the
University of San Diego's Trans-Border Institute estimated that as
many as 253,000 firearms were purchased in the United States from
2010 to 2012 for the sole purpose of being trafficked across the
border into Mexico. The figure is nearly three times the amount
(about 88,000 firearms) trafficked between 1997 and 1999, when the
federal assault weapons ban was in place.
The Mexican government has long held that lax U.S. gun laws have
facilitated the illegal flow of weapons south. Officials say more
than 70,000 people have died in cartel-related violence there since
2006, although some human rights groups claim the figure is closer to
100,000. A 2012 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
report said that about 68,000 of the 99,000 weapons at crime scenes
in Mexico since 2007 were traced back to the U.S. The firearms were
either manufactured here or legally imported and subsequently smuggled.
The Trans-Border Institute researchers also estimate that about 2.2
percent of weapons purchased in the U.S. are bound for Mexico.
"These findings suggest that the United States is a significant,
albeit unintentional, contributor to the global black market in arms
and ammunition," writes report co-author Topher McDougal. "It
underlines the point that with domestic gun rights come
responsibilities. The analysis also suggests that the United States
has been negligent in preventing illegal firearms trafficking."
Included in the study are recommendations to stymie the flow of
weapons, including universal background checks and eliminating cash
transactions for gun purchases in border states.
There are no specific records of individual gun sales because the ATF
is limited in the data it can collect. The Trans-Border researchers
reached their estimates by creating a "demand curve" that uses
various pieces of geographic information and county-level data on
U.S. gun sellers.
Critics have long disputed the tracing figures that have been used to
determine the origins of weapons. They allege that Mexicans, in an
attempt to make the U.S. appear more complicit, only submit weapons
for tracing that they know have origins here.
McDougal didn't refute that, but he said there could be a less
nefarious reason.
"The fact is they have a huge backup of arms submitted for tracing,"
he said. "So Mexican authorities have a good reason to submit only
guns that are traceable."
He added that the data on sales isn't exact because of current
reporting restrictions.
"We often get the question about how many guns have been sold and
there is not a way to answer that because there are no statistics
that are collected," said Franceska Perot, the public affairs officer
for the ATF field office in Houston, which has jurisdiction over most
of Texas' border with Mexico. "The gun dealers who sell the guns keep
the federal forms at their premises. Nothing is sent to ATF, so we
have no idea."
The agency is also without a permanent director, and has had the same
amount of staff for several years, despite the growth of other law
enforcement agencies within the Department of Justice. Advocates for
gun control say that lack of additional resources is a result of the
political volatility surrounding the Second Amendment. Critics have
fired back, pointing to issues like the "Fast and Furious" scandal,
in which federal agents allowed thousands of illegally purchased
weapons to end up in the hands of alleged Mexican criminals.
Since the botched operation, attempts have been made to curb the
illegal flow of weapons by increasing reporting requirements. In
August 2011, the ATF enacted a rule that requires federal dealers to
report to the bureau when they sell two or more long rifles to the
same person within a five-day period in a southern border state. The
policy is already in place for handgun buyers across the country. A
San Antonio gun broker, 10-Ring Precision, filed suit to stop the
rifle-reporting requirement, alleging the border states were subject
to unfair burdens that would lead to economic harms.
Mexico has tried its own hand at curbing the flow of weapons. In
January, the Mexican Congress approved a measure to formally ask the
U.S. Senate to create a gun registry in the four southern border
states. Ricardo Alday, a spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in the
U.S., said there has been no movement by either country on that measure.
'TEXAS WILL LEAD THE CHARGE'
Tuesday's announcement by the United Nations General Assembly to
implement a global arms trade treaty — and its subsequent praise from
the U.S. State Department — drew a swift reaction from Texas Attorney
General Greg Abbott.
In a statement on the treaty, Secretary of State John Kerry said it
"will establish a common international standard for the national
regulation of the international trade in conventional arms." The
statement added that the treaty would reduce the risk of
international weapons transfers that perpetuate crimes overseas.
Though Kerry's statement also says that the treaty applies only to
international trade and that nothing in it "could ever infringe on
the rights of American citizens under our domestic law or the
Constitution, including the Second Amendment," Abbott told President
Obama in a letter that he should reject it if it's ratified by the
U.S. Senate.
"The Arms Trade Treaty agreed to today by the United Nations is a
threat to Americans' Constitutional liberty," Abbott wrote in the
letter dated Tuesday. "I urge you to reject that treaty. If you sign
it, and if the U.S. Senate ratifies the treaty, Texas will lead the
charge to have the treaty overturned in court as a violation of the
U.S. Constitution."
Abbott says the treaty would trample on Second Amendment rights and
potentially keep U.S. citizens at the mercy of "international
bureaucrats" who are not accountable to people here.
"Agreeing to the treaty does more than trample Second Amendment
rights," Abbott wrote. "It also threatens to erode all liberties
guaranteed to Americans in the Constitution by establishing the
precedent that the UN has some level of authority to govern our lives."
--
The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public media
organization that operates www.texastribune.org. Its mission is to
promote civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics,
government, and other matters of statewide concern through original
journalism and on-the-record, open-to-the-public events. The Monitor
uses its content free of charge.
end
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