The Problem Is Weapons

One of the most important problems in Mexico’s fight against crime is the thousands of weapons in the hands of criminals. Genaro Garcia Luna complained not long ago that the police must confront gangs that possess hundreds of “goat horns” (AK-47 rifles). The problem worsens daily, given the proximity of the U.S. and the corruption in our customs offices. To this one must add the weapons registered at the Department of National Defense that are in private hands but the use of which is impossible to control completely.

The availability of weapons to the cartels arises, in great part, from the laxity with which their sale is regulated in the U.S. In Texas and five other states there is no minimum age for the purchase of weapons; in 43 no authorization, license or special permit is required; in 45 there is no limit to the number of weapons that a person can purchase; four have established that the same person can purchase only one weapon a month as a means of preventing the illegal traffic in weapons. The result of this foolish level of regulation is that the population has 65 million pistols and revolvers and 39 percent of homes have a rifle. That explains why every year 130,000 wounds from firearms are reported.

The defenders of these weapons cite the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which establishes the right of all persons to own weapons, but many theorists have pointed out that the amendment is out of touch with the times and have called it the most shameful portion of the entire Constitution.

The issue that interests us in Mexico is the number of weapons sold in the U.S. that wind up in the hands of criminals. Surely the number of such weapons is more that thousands annually, without counting the legal exports from the US that reported sales of 18 million in 2004. These figures show that the cooperation against crime between the U.S. and Mexico should begin with oversight of the U.S. weapons market and keep careful watch over the pathways across the border into Mexico. If this is not done, it will be very difficult for Mexican authorities to defeat the mafias that traffick in drugs, people, weapons and kidnapping.

The best of way of fighting crime includes giving our police better weapons, but also keeping the weapons necessary to break the law out of the hands of criminals. We must invest in the intelligence work that can interfere with weapons trafficking and crack down on the enormous clandestine market that exists now.