How U.S. Guns Drive Cartel Violence in Mexico
▻https://www.thetrace.org/2021/10/us-border-mexico-drug-cartel-american-guns-trafficking
As the Mexican military ramped up its pursuit of cartels in the mid-aughts, criminal organizations were eager to match its firepower. They looked north of the border, where high-powered weaponry is readily available. American firearms quickly made their way to the heart of the bloodshed: Cartels have smuggled large numbers of weapons into Mexico, fueling record-breaking tallies of homicides, explosive conflicts with law enforcement, and raging inter-cartel violence.
This August, Mexico opened up a new front in its war against the cartels. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court, Mexican authorities accused several major American gunmakers — including Colt, Smith & Wesson, and Ruger — of negligent business practices, alleging that their reckless sales and lax regulation of distribution channels have contributed to a surge of firearms into cartel hands.
Here’s how U.S. weapons have fueled violence in Mexico, by the numbers:
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Up to 150,000
The estimated number of people killed in Mexico as a result of organized crime between 2006 and the end of 2018