Mexican drug cartels have long been a source of tension between the U.S. and Mexico, as the cartels smuggle deadly drugs and illegal aliens into the U.S. while committing regular acts of brutal violence to advance their agenda and maintain power. The Trump administration has now designated these cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and recently struck an agreement for Mexico to deploy 10,000 troops to the border. But that agreement also furthers Mexico's narrative that U.S. guns are the main source of cartel violence.
Mexican leaders have pushed this blame America theory for years, even suing U.S. gun manufacturers last year for their alleged role in cartel violence. In announcing the recent border security agreement with the U.S., Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said, "For the first time, the U.S. government will work jointly to avoid the entry of guns to Mexico."
But those who cover the border on a regular basis strongly dispute the idea that American guns coming into Mexico are the primary source of cartel violence. Todd Bensman with the Center for Immigration Studies calls Mexico's claim "unmoored from facts."
Bensman tells KTRH that evidence shows most of the cartel weapons come from inside of Mexico. "There's lots of stories and media reporting that shows that corrupt Mexican military personnel are raiding their own armories, and selling vast quantities of military weapons to their own cartels," he says. "This is a way to deflect from their own culpability, which is vast corruption in the Mexican military."
Furthermore, the weapons that have been found in cartels' caches or seized after battles are far from American rifles and pistols. "The weaponry that we're going to be seeing when the fireworks start (during cartel battles) is gonna be fully-automatic, belt-fed, 50-caliber machine guns, and mortars, and Claymore land mines, and that sort of thing," says Bensman. "And that's not coming from American gun stores."
Photo: AFP