The call is coming from inside the border.
USA TODAY exclusive: Massive data leak ties names of American shops and buyers to thousands of guns recovered at Mexican crime scenes.
Nick Penzenstadler
May 22, 2024
A massive leak of Mexican military intelligence has exposed for the first time in two decades U.S. gun shops and smugglers tied to 78,000 firearms recovered south of the border – and which types of guns are being trafficked.[...]
Despite efforts to stem the flow, these American firearms are smuggled south as part of the cycle of Latin-American narcotics headed north. The violence in Central America fueled, in part, by guns also has contributed to the migration crisis at the U.S. border.
As part of the leak, emails relaying U.S. government data between Mexican military leaders and PowerPoint presentations by Mexico’s attorney general show which American straw buyers were tied to the most weapons as of 2022.[...]
Gun trace data is kept out of public view by a rider to a Congressional bill known as the “Tiahrt Amendment,” passed in 2003 to shield gun shops from scrutiny. Each year, the ATF provides a count of the guns recovered in Mexico that had been bought in the U.S., with no further details.[...]
“I respect that the U.S. government wants this shielded, but it’s frustrating that the information isn’t public,” said [Alejandro Celorio, a legal adviser to Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs] who is leading his country’s lawsuit against American gun manufacturers and five Arizona gun shops. “I think the average American would be surprised that the fentanyl crisis is nurtured because of the number of firearms going to Mexico to empower the cartels.”
American gun shops are selling guns that end up in Mexico
Partnering with American attorneys, Celorio is going after Barrett, Beretta, Century Arms, Colt, Glock, Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger & Co. in a $10 billion suit that was revived by an appeals court in March.
Senator Katie Britt used the State of the Union rebuttal to scare the nation with a story that happened under President George Bush’s watch and to inform non-Biden voters that we see you, we hear you and we stand by you.
So since Sen. Britt has made it her life mission to focus on the root cause of the border crisis that she described in vivid detail, I have no doubt she will be traveling to Texas and Arizona—the two major sources of guns used in crimes in Mexico, according to this data leak—and she will admonish her Republican colleagues on how their Second Amendment fetishism helps fuel the border crisis they refuse to fix.