True, because many of those smugglers also smuggle military-grade firearms back to Mexico. It's very risky, but also very easy money. Sometimes there are enhanced controls to detect smuggling, but I'd bet anything they have well-bribed moles who warn the smugglers when that happens.
Most of the guns smuggled into Mexico from the United States are status guns. Think unique guns you'd find in popular video games, gold plated, old west revolvers and antiques, etc.
Practically it is much easier for cartels to buy thousands of rifles from Africa or the Middle East than to try and get them across the border from the US. Handguns are trivial to source directly from Chinese factories producing Glock and 1911 knockoffs.
Heck, you can order every part individually to assemble a Glock directly from Wish.com if you know what to search for.
Not true in the slightest, it's extremely easy to smuggle guns out of the United States. Glocks, AR-15s, AKs, Barrett .50 cal rifles, etc. [1] 60% of firearms trafficked are bought without a background check from gun shows in border states. Cartels continue to purchase weapons this way because it's so easy.
> 60% of firearms trafficked are bought without a background check from gun shows in border states.
Is that from the page labeled 9 of that PDF? That's wrong on 2 counts.
The first is that that graph is showing a breakdown by destination (i.e. 60% of requests to trace a gun that was later traced to a gun show came from Mexico, not that 60% of guns in Mexico are from US gun shows).
The second is that an FFL still has to conduct a background check, even if the sale occurs at a gun show. All of those guns either had a background check, or the dealer is going to jail. The "gun show loophole" only applies to normal people trying to sell a couple of guns. As soon as the ATF thinks that someone is "engaged in the business of dealing firearms" they are required to be licensed as an FFL, and must do background checks regardless of where the sale occurs. It's all in https://www.atf.gov/file/100871/download
The report you point to has some self selection bias, it is a report only covering guns coming from the US.
Mexico only initiated 32k traces in 2021, which lends further support to my point that the majority of guns are not coming from the US. That number is incredibly small compared to the net new volume of guns cartels get on a yearly basis.
“Most cartels buy in bulk, and the weapons are coming from places like Nicaragua and other South American countries. Also Asia and some from the Middle East,” a Tijuana-based police authority who requested anonymity explained. “And, another factor is the CNC machines making uppers in clandestine shops in Mexico.”
https://www.foxnews.com/world/mexico-guns-black-market-tepit...
I'm not sure you understand the ATF report you're trying to cite. It doesn't say a lot of things because they don't fall under ATFs jurisdiction and they don't have any data on it. My information comes directly from law enforcement sources on the ground.
No, they really get most of their guns from the USA. No shipping on a boat (China doesn’t even have a gun industry for consumers, Russia and Brazil are the only producers of note with production comparable to the USA in size, and Brazil has that Dorian gap that makes smuggling difficult), cheap, and America makes a lot more guns than it needs. The statistic that 30% of Americans have 5 guns each is skewed because many of those guns were smuggled out to Mexico and Central America.
One of the reasons Republicans were so eager outraged that the Clinton admin ATF was trying to track gun smuggling from the USA into Mexico was that it was such a bad look for them.
