Guns from the United States kill tens of thousands of Mexicans a year
Each year, tens of thousands of powerful assault rifles are illegally trafficked from the United States into Mexico, mostly by U.S. citizens, where they are used to support cartel-related violence and drug trafficking. Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said that the number of machine guns seized at crime scenes in the country jumped 63 percent in early 2019, and the number of assault weapons has surged 122 percent. The illegal traffic of U.S. guns into Mexico — an underground market worth hundreds of millions of dollars — fuels nearly all of the country's skyrocketing violence, according to law enforcement officials on both sides of the border. Mexico is reeling from daily drug and gun violence fueled by the illegal southbound traffic of American-made guns.
Jack Riley, a retired DEA agent, said U.S. citizens trafficking American-made guns through Mexican ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border, including through San Ysidro-Tijuana, is big business. "There is a tremendous market for them and unfortunately there's a ton of people in the United States willing to do business with some of the cartels," said Riley.
Law enforcement officials estimate gun runners move around 700 guns into Mexico every single day. That's a quarter of a million guns each year. "There is a tremendous market for them and unfortunately there's a ton of people in the United States willing to do business with some of the cartels," said Riley.
More than 33,000 people were murdered in Mexico last year, a record high. In Tijuana, a city that saw more than 2,500 homicides last year, earning it the title of "the most violent city in the world," nearly every single gun seized by police since 2016 came from the United States, according to the city's chief of police. A report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office showed that 70 percent of guns seized across all of Mexico have U.S. origins.
https://www.mcall.com/united-states-guns-kill-tens-of-thousands-of-mexicans-a-year-story.html
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