So if it’s so difficult to buy a gun in Mexico, where do all of the country’s guns come from? The answer has as much if not more to do with U.S. On paper it’s significantly harder to legally purchase a firearm in Mexico than it is in the United States. Still, the gun trafficking issue has largely been overshadowed by other immigration policy debates. should immediately stop the flow of guns and bulk cash across its southern border,” Sarukhan wrote in a tweet. Trump’s recent threat to impose tariffs on Mexican imports once again put his immigration policy front and center, with much of the focus on the issue of migrants attempting to enter the U.S.ĭuring the standoff, which led to a deal between the two countries that avoided new tariffs, Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador to the U.S., suggested a different idea for stemming the flow of migrants. In Honduras, 45 percent of guns recovered in crime scenes were traced to the United States as well. For example, the report found that from 2014 to 2016, 49 percent of crime guns seized in El Salvador were originally purchased in the U.S. Other countries in Central America can also trace a large proportion of guns seized in crimes to the United States. And the Trump has administration has recently taken steps to ease rules on gun exports, which enables manufacturers to sell guns in Mexico and Central America countries.Ī report from the Center of American Progress found that the United States was the primary source of weapons used in crime in Mexico and Canada. This percentage remains consistent, said Bradley Engelbert, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. A report from the U.S Government Accountability Office showed that 70 percent of guns seized in Mexico by Mexican authorities and submitted for tracing have a U.S. Research shows that a majority of guns in Mexico can be traced to the U.S. The country, which has a population of 125 million, had more than 10,000 homicides recorded between January and May of this year.Ī root cause of the violence that drives the displacement of many families in Mexico and Central America: the flow of guns from the U.S. The violence has been largely concentrated in drug trafficking regions in the northwest and the Pacific Coast region. Twenty percent of all homicides in Mexico last year were related to organized crime, according to a study from the University of San Diego, though the study noted the estimate was conservative and the figure was likely higher. A majority of those murders - 20,005 - were committed with firearms, according to government data. In 2018, the Mexican government recorded more than 30,000 intentional murders. Mexico’s murder rate is at an all-time high, according to that nation’s official figures.
President Donald Trump campaigned on border security and building a wall to, among other things, protect the United States from violence in Mexico and Central America.īut while his administration’s hardline approach to immigration has focused on dealing with an influx of migrants along the southern border, which Trump in speeches and tweets also ties to an influx of drugs and crime, he has not addressed a central part of the violence that drives the displacement of many families in Mexico and Central America: guns, the majority of which flow from the U.S.
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