Arturo Sánchez Jiménez
La Jornada Newspaper
Monday, December 29, 2025, p. 13
Tracing the origin of thousands of guns used in crimes in Mexico comes to a standstill before discovering who originally purchased them. According to the most recent data from the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), in the last year 18,249 confiscated weapons were tracked in Mexico; However, in 36 percent of the cases it was impossible to identify the initial buyer.
ATF reports indicate that this situation is due to various problems, such as altered or deleted serial numbers; gun shops and distributors with whom contact cannot be established because they have ceased their activity; or tracking requests sent by Mexican authorities that do not have complete documentation.
This limitation is critical, since the ATF’s eTrace system represents the only technical tool that Mexican authorities have to try to reconstruct the trafficking route of weapons that reach the hands of criminals in the country.
The effectiveness of tracing has improved compared to 2019, a year in which the initial buyer could not be identified in almost half of the files, that is, 49.8 percent of the cases. However, the 6,572 weapons without an identified buyer in the traces corresponding to 2024 continue to favor trafficking networks.
The report details the hegemony of the US market in the recovered arsenal. Of the total of 25,884 weapons sent for tracking by Mexico in the recent year, 70.5 percent originated in the United States. Of these, 13,04 weapons were manufactured directly on US soil, while another 5,245 were legally imported into the United States from third countries before being illegally introduced into Mexico.
In addition to identification problems, data indicates that traffickers have brought weapons with greater firepower into the country in recent years. While the recovery of revolvers has decreased, the seizure of rifles has increased significantly. In 2019, rifles represented 27 percent of the total weapons confiscated and traced (5,811 units); By 2024, this proportion rose to 37.5 percent, with 9,696 rifles insured in one year. Guns, however, remain the most common weapon and represent about 50 percent of the devices seized and traced each year.
Against this backdrop, the governments of the United States and Mexico recently announced the “Mission Firewall: United Initiative against Firearms Trafficking. This strategy promises an “unprecedented level of collaboration,” with objectives such as facilitating the expansion of the use of eTrace and ballistic imaging technology in the 32 states of the Mexican Republic. Likewise, the United States committed to increasing bilateral inspections and investigations to combat illicit trafficking at the border and achieve more prosecutions of suspected traffickers.
