Arturo Sánchez Jiménez
La Jornada Newspaper
Monday, December 23, 2024, p. 4
According to United States authorities, it has been identified that nearly 70 percent of the 136,894 weapons whose origin has been traced after being smuggled and confiscated from organized crime gangs in Mexico between 2018 and 2023 were manufactured, imported or sold legally in their country before crossing its southern border.
The origin of the rest of the weapons is uncertain. According to the most recent data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), it has not been possible to establish where more than three out of every 10 weapons used in crimes committed in Mexico arrived from. the aforementioned period and it is presumed that either they never legally entered the US market or that, if they did, they were taken to a third country before being illicitly trafficked from there to ours.
The ATF is the agency that administers the eTrace system, through which the US government traces the origin of weapons confiscated in its country or abroad; eTrace is the only tool that the authorities have to try to find the origin and those responsible for the purchase of weapons irregularly introduced from the United States into Mexican territory and used here to commit a crime.
The data indicates that, at the request of Mexican authorities, until October 2024, the data of 136,894 weapons confiscated from crime in Mexico between 2018 and 2023 had been processed through eTrace. Of them, 91,896 – which represents 67.13 percent of the total – were identified as being of US origin, which indicates that they were manufactured in that country or that they were legal imports to the United States. United before entering Mexico.
Meanwhile, in the same period, the searches showed 44,998 pieces; That is, 32.87 percent were manufactured in a country other than the United States or came from a place that could not be identified, so their origin is not clear to the authorities.
Of these, 22,126 – that is, 16.17 percent of the total analyzed from 2018 to 2023 – were classified by the ATF as non-US manufacturer
which indicates that it is known that they were manufactured outside the United States, but it is unknown if they were imported into the neighboring nation and by whom, since they could be weapons manufactured abroad that never legally entered US commerce and, therefore, would not bear the identifying stamp of a firearms importer
from that country, according to the ATF.
The agency emphasizes that cannot determine whether these non-U.S.-made firearms were imported directly into Mexico, or whether the firearms were legally shipped to the neighboring country to the north or triangulated in another country and then arrived in Mexico through legal or illegal means
.
Weapons whose origin has not been identified include both pistols and rifles, as well as machine guns, silencers and gas launchers, among others.
