• Drug violence spills over the border
• Possibility of drug legalization debate raised by President Calderón
• Poor U.S. gun regulation enables drug violence in Mexico
• “Straw purchasing” and “ant running”
It is possible for terror to originate from a recognized symbol of power, safety, and strength. When a manifestation of all that is good betrays the trust bestowed upon it and becomes instead an agent of destruction, ruthlessness, and brutality, the fear it generates is far greater than if it had been regarded as evil all along.
Emerging as one of the most dangerous byproducts of the drug trade, Los Zetas’ existence represents a profound threat to the U.S. as well as to their country of origin. Not only does the U.S. keep Los Zetas in business with its insatiable appetite for drugs, but it also blindly puts guns in the hands of these killers. Since 2006, 28,000 individuals have lost their lives to this hemispheric catastrophe, a huge jump from the 23,000 reported in June of this year. With such an astronomically increasing death toll, drastic action needs be taken – and fast. Mexican President Felipe Calderón has taken the recent step of proposing a debate to consider the pros and cons of drug legalization. As for the U.S., it is critical that it finally takes responsibility for its role as a gun supplier to the drug trafficking industry. Of the tens thousands who have died at the hands of drug violence, many of these victims’ last visions were of a U.S.-made or U.S.-imported semi-automatic assault rifle.
The Dark Side
“Imagine a band of U.S. Green Berets going rogue and offering their services and firepower to drug cartels,” writes CNN’s Michael Ware, offering an accurate comparison to the manner in which Los Zetas formed. The original Zeta members began as a segment of the Mexican Army’s special operations’ unit called el Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE). Like the U.S. Army Special Forces, GAFE personnel are rigorously trained by international experts in all the highly specialized areas of military tactics. In recent years, their objective has been to mobilize against the country’s extensive Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs). Now, however, many of them have switched sides.
It all started in the late 1990s, when Osiel Cardenas Guillen, leader of the expansive and powerful Gulf Cartel, acquired the partnership of GAFE Lieutenant Arturo Guzman Decenas. Guzman was soon joined by thirty other GAFE deserters, all of whom were enticed by the lucrative potential of the drug market. The ex-GAFE members branded themselves Los Zetas after the radio code “Z” assigned to high-level officials in the Mexican Army. As the enforcement branch of the Gulf Cartel, Los Zetas engaged in the activities of collecting debt, obtaining cocaine supply, protecting trafficking routes known as plazas, monitoring cartel loyalty, and, most notably, performing executions. After the death of Guzman in 2002 and the arrest of Cardenas in 2003, the top leadership post of Los Zetas was seized by former GAFE member Heriberto “El Lazca” Lazcano. El Lazca remains in power to this day.
According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA):
The [Gulf] Cartel is known among their rivals for their extreme violence. This reputation is owed to a group of Mexican military deserters known as “Los Zetas” who oversee the Cartel as vicious enforcers who have kidnapped, tortured, and murdered—including beheadings—of law enforcement officials, innocent citizens, informants, and rival drug gangs.
This statement, made in the context of announcing the ten most wanted DTO leaders in the country, was released over a year ago on July 23, 2009. At the time, Los Zetas had already become the ultimate symbol of drug violence, but today, it embodies this terror to an even greater extent.
No longer are Los Zetas simply an arm of the vast Gulf Cartel; they have consolidated their power to become their own force, perhaps the most ruthless organization of the drug trade ever to have evolved. No longer are their activities restricted to areas south of the border, as extensive Zeta networks are beginning to develope throughout Texas and major cities across the United States. Los Zetas have hired U.S.-based gangs, including the Mexican Mafia, Texas Syndicate, MS-13, and Hermanos Pistoleros Latinos, to continue their command of the drug routes that extend far beyond the border. Finally, no longer do Los Zetas stick to drug enforcement activities. Now, as noted by Foreign Policy Research Institute scholar George Grayson, its members practice enterprises such as murder-for-hire, contract killings, extortion, money laundering, and human smuggling. Unless they are confronted with a direct, coordinated effort to undercut their strategies, Los Zetas are quickly becoming an unstoppable force.
Lethal Weapons in Well-Trained Hands
“AK-47 assault rifles, AR-15 assault rifles, MP5s submachine guns, 50 mm machine guns, grenade launchers, ground-to-air missiles, dynamite, bazookas, and helicopters,” lists Grayson in his description of the weapons affiliated with Los Zetas’ activities. From the members known as Los Halcones (The Hawks) who watch over the plazas to the masterminds of La Dirección (The Command) who often carry out kidnappings and executions, a well-stocked arsenal is crucial for Zeta success. In fact, an entire subset of the organization is called Los Mañosos (The Crafty Ones), whose basic goal is to obtain weapons and ammunition to support all of Los Zetas’ illiegal practices.
Because Los Zetas have, for the most part, effectively maintained control over Mexico’s east coast, an area previously supervised by the much older Gulf Cartel, one can conclude that the objective of Los Mañosos has been met with significant success. Yet the quantity of semi-automatics and other military-style weapons accumulated by Los Zetas, especially in the context of a nation with some of the strictest gun control laws in the hemisphere, introduces a startling conundrum as to where Los Zetas acquired their firearms. One does not have to look far for an answer – in fact, it lies only a few miles north.
Although Mexican citizens have a right to bear arms “for their protection and legitimate defense,” Article 10 of Mexico’s Constitution also explicitly states that “Federal law will determine the cases, conditions, requisites and places inhabitants will be authorized to carry arms.” Thus, the Federal Firearms and Explosives Law, overseen by the Secretary of National Defense, has extensive power over which types of weapons reach the hands of citizens. In reference to assault weapons, Bernard Thompson, a columnist for the consulting firm MexiData.info notes that “individual permits for honest citizens are in effect impossible to obtain.” The process for owning such a firearm, he explains, involves registering with the military, notifying the Interior Secretariat, and overcoming purposely placed roadblocks to procuring carrying licenses and ammunition. In short, accumulating a stash of weaponry from Mexican sources is extremely challenging and therefore especially unattractive when one considers the options available on the other side of the border.
Sadly, the United States, with its polarized political climate and wealthy gun lobbies, such as the powerful National Rifle Association, makes so many concessions in the name of protecting its citizens’ right to bear arms that guns are flowing almost effortlessly into the hands of criminals. Between the years 2004 and 2008, the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) conducted a detailed tracing process using a significant portion of the 23,000 firearms recovered by Mexican Authorities. They found that a startling 87% percent of the arms originated in the United States. Moreover, between the years 2006 and 2008, this figure increased to 90%. To break this data down further, 70% of the weapons came from the states of Texas, California, and Arizona: 39%, 20%, and 10% respectively.
Due to the fact that most of these arms originate in the United States, it is clear that a lack of federal gun regulation is indirectly fueling the gruesome activities of illegal DTOs such as Los Zetas. Michael Isikoff of Newsweek’s investigative blog Declassified reports that recently, “the Mexican military has discovered a major training camp run by the notorious Zetas drug cartel and stocked with an arsenal of military weapons, including 140 semi-automatic assault rifles and 10,000 rounds of ammunition—all of them believed to be purchased in the United States.” Additionally, the Mexican government has projected that approximately 2,000 guns cross the border daily. Unless the U.S. starts taking a closer look directly at the issue of arms trafficking and its implications, DTOs will continue to take advantage of lax regulations.
Flaws in the Gun Laws
The design of current U.S. gun law regulation comes mostly from the text of the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) and its 1993 amendment, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. According to the law, arms dealers must become accredited as federal firearms licensees (FFLs) who are subject to inspections by the ATF. Furthermore, background checks are required for non-licensed costumers of the FFLs, which deny criminals, those involved in court procedures, illegal immigrants, and those with mental disabilities the ability to buy a firearm. Although federal law states that purchases of more than one handgun within five business days must be reported to the Attorney General, it also prohibits the formation of a registry of firearm owners, leading to the practice of destroying records within twenty days.
Needless to say, most of these stipulations are easy to manipulate or simply avoid altogether. Perhaps the greatest flaw of the GCA is that it does not address the issue of private gun sales between two unlicensed owners. In states that do not supplement the federal law with local or state-wide restrictions, including Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, such exchanges are perfectly legal.
This plays easily into a tactic used by many firearm traffickers known as straw purchasing and ant running. During a straw purchase, an ineligible candidate for gun ownership directs an ostensibly eligible individual to purchase the gun in his stead. Then, the transaction between the two parties occurs undetected as one of many private firearms deals that are out of the reach of government regulation. When the trafficker acquires one or two of his desired arms, he is then able to smuggle them across the border and, if caught, claim the guns as private property. This is called “ant running” because when several different DTO members successfully bring these small loads across the border, the arsenal begins to build piece-by-piece.
These obvious flaws are also exacerbated by the elimination of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which was in effect from 1994 to 2004. This ban prohibited civilians from purchasing semiautomatic firearms, including Zeta favorites: AK-47s, AR-15s , and other weapons able to accept a detachable magazine. These firearms were designed by and for the military during World War II in an effort to create a lighter gun for rapid fire in situations of heavy warfare. Under the circumstances, they have absolutely no business in the hands of ordinary civilians, and are in fact endangering the lives of Mexican civilians, as well as military personnel, as Los Zetas make use of such weapons with the military precision for which they were trained.*
Looking Toward the Future
“Law enforcement authorities in both nations are confronting the Southwest border paradigm: drugs and illegal migrants flow north, guns and money flow south,” notes a report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) on gun trafficking on the southwest border. “Although firearms trafficking is not the only reason violent crime is increasing in Mexico, reducing the flow of illegal firearms from the United States to Mexico would arguably reduce crime rates in Mexico and improve public safety.” Thus, while the monumental challenges of eradicating the drug trafficking enterprises between the U.S. and Mexico require a multi-dimensional approach, it can begin with the relatively straightforward issue of gun control.
Helpful measures would include the following: reducing the restrictions on record-keeping for arms sales, creating a system of running background checks for private gun exchanges, and reinstating a version of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Additionally, the U.S. should take a more direct approach to apprehend drug traffickers. As it stands, those caught with guns while crossing into Mexico only receive a general smuggling charge, which fails to recognize the greater transgression. Meanwhile, the United States should consider ratifying the Organization of American States Convention on Illicit Firearms Trafficking (CIFTA). Twenty-nine countries have adopted the document, while only four, including the U.S., have not. CIFTA calls for the creation of licenses for exporting, importing, and transporting firearms, the marking of firearms for tracking purposes, the sharing of information and records between concerned nations, and the strengthening of weapon controls at border crossing sites.
Yes, the United States will always value its constitutional right to bear arms, as made irrefutably clear by the recent Supreme Court case McDonald v. Chicago. Gun advocates are so bent on preserving a constitutional right, erroneously perceived as under threat, that any steps taken by the federal government in the name of general safety result in immediate and extreme reactions from conservatives. In their zeal turned belligerence in reducing gun control initiatives, conservative politicians and their constituents fail to extrapolate upon the consequences that will arise from such unfounded adamancy. Such antagonism is literally costing the lives of thousands as poor gun regulation in the United States enables the barbarous acts of the ruthless Zetas and their DTO counterparts that are tearing Mexico apart.
*This article has been slightly modified on the suggestion of a reader who preferred to withhold his name.
This is a pretty naive article, as it fails to take into account the amount of weapons DTOs import from places other than the US. Quite a few weapons that end up in the hands of the Zetas or any other traffickers are virtually untraceable, as they were obtained through corrupt law enforcement in Latin American and elsewhere or through illegal arms traffickers. Given the amount of weapons freely available in Colombia, Venezuela, Central America and the former Eastern bloc nations, it's virtually incomprehensible why any drug trafficking organization would want to rely on the relatively small and somewhat supervised stocks in the US. To give an example, it would be much easier to buy M-16s from a corrupt Guatemalan major than to risk going across the US border to buy them from a dealer that may or may not be under surveillance from US law enforcement. This is a pretty unfounded piece because it's more just a diatribe on US gun control (or lack thereof) and not a meaningful insight into Mexico's weapons flow.
Alfredo, I agree with you completely. Many of the weapons employed by the cartels come from many different sources outside of the United States. What are particularly troublesome that I did not see in the article are the fully automatic weapons and hand grenades used by the cartels. The fully automatic weapons are far more lethal that an AR-15 for example, which is semi-automatic. And a hand grenade is a hand grenade. These military weapons are stolen from the military stocks in Central America, not the USA. Although I agree that US gun laws do allow cartels access to weaponry, I also believe that the rampant corruption in Mexican law enforcement poses a major threat to citizens of both Mexico and the USA. The corruption of Mexican law enforcement has made them a threat to some of their own communities as they carry out executions, and acts of violence on behalf of drug cartels. The USA did not create that corruption, but it is an inherent part of the vicious circle of drugs, violence, weapons, etc… This article takes a very simplistic view of a very complex issue that ranges far beyond US gun control and Los Zetas.
I too found the repetition of statistical data on the gun source a little too convenient, especially when NPR and others have done segments explaining the problem with that 90% figure. I gather it means 90% of the weapons that were given by Mexico to the ATF. I'm no expert, but as I understand it, Mexico only gives the US weapons to trace if they are of US manufacture and still carry a serial number. Well, weapons may be flowing from the US that are originally made elsewhere, and weapons in an illicit market may well have had their serial numbers filed off, so the 90% is a pretty useless statistic. Whereas some of the comments above focus on the fact that many of the weapons used may come from elsewhere, what I am saying is that the number of weapons coming from the US could be far higher than the number that Mexico asks the US to trace.
Ask more questions. What is the estimated number of weapons involved in the violence? Of those, how many are the type of small arms the ATF is asked to trace? What is the total number of weapons captured? What is the number of those that are of US manufacture? Of those manufactured in the US, how many carry legible serial numbers? Are weapons of US manufacture captured at the same rate as weapons manufactured in other countries? What percentage of US gun owners own a gun made outside the US?
When there is no better data available, I don't blame people who cite the existing data, but full disclosure on the limitation of the statistic needs to be made. When it isn't, that amounts to lying with statistics and I lose confidence in the credibility of the article as a whole, and perhaps end up doubting information that is perfectly correct, which means the COHA researcher did a lot of work for little persuasive impact.
Shelley McConnell
St. Lawrence University
Isn't it strange that gun nuts try to refute the article with propaganda from the gun lobby?
Why should the rich Mexican drug cartels import guns from overseas? They can't everything they want from the US and a society awash in guns.
Because they're much easier to obtain is less regulated environments, such as overseas, genius. Can you even think critically?
Some correction:
….They can buy everything they want from the US….
"AK-47 assault rifles, AR-15 assault rifles, MP5s submachine guns, 50 mm machine guns, grenade launchers, ground-to-air missiles, dynamite, bazookas, and helicopters,” lists Grayson in his description of the weapons affiliated with Los Zetas’ activities."
All federal and state laws in the USA prohibit sales of these weapons already. More laws will not solve this problem. People who place profits over lives will never obey any laws.
The Mexican government and military is so shot through with corruption that they can not bring any unified action against the cartels.
The cartels are so powerful and rich that they can purchase weapons from anywhere in the world.
South of the border there is a terrible war and right now the evil side is winning.
Los Zetas are coming, Los Zetas are coming ! Nice try…
It is so entertaining to read an article written by somebody who's simply pretending to understand the subjects being presented … especially when the casual, and nonsensical, judgement is inserted, like "hav(ing) absolutely no business in the hands of ordinary civilians", or "erroneously perceived as under threat". Apparantly you didn't notice that 44% of the US Supreme Court opined that there is NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT for civilians to possess firearms.
In this screed, disguised as investigative journalism, it might have helped to get at least SOME facts correct. For instance, the AK-47 is not semi-automatic, there is no such thing as a "semi-automatic assualt rifle", there is no such thing as a 50mm rifle, 10,000 rounds of ammunition is what two recreational competition shooters consume in a year (it is not an "arsenal"), neither the AK-47 nor the AR-15 was designed in or for WWII, and last, but most importantly, the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of Los Zetas weapons came from the same place their high-ranking people did — from the Mexican Military (which happens to buy many fo its small arms from the USA). It is *much* easier and less expensive to steal automatic weapons from the Mexican Army than it is to buy them in the US.
You say that like its a fact.
It is not easier to steal from the Mexican Army than to get them from the USA. The Mexican Army doesn't even use AK-47. In any case, your authorities are as bribeable as any mexican one, but you just don't (want to) see it. Most mexican druglords actually LIVE in the USA, and authorities like the CIA and DEA are aware of this and do nothing (fact: no druglord has ever been caught by US authorities; the only thing you guys kill are children). Most trafficking is done mostly thanks to american customs agents and officers instead of the romantic stories the media tells you (matresses, inside someone's stomac, books etc). The mexican army is actually on the line of battle. I don't doubt that they have their honesty issues aswell, but how confortable for you is to avoid any responsability just because you heard mexicans are corrupt.
We depend upon our 55,000-person subscription list to monitor where we get it wrong. We then tried to amend our original article so that it is now accurate when it comes to facts, not necessarily opinion. COHA is particularly grateful to Lawrence University's Professor Shelley McConnell, for putting things into perspective. So, thanks, and keep it going.
Larry Birns, COHA
It sure is nice to know that COHA considers bolt-action (140-year-old design) firearms to be the only ones that civilians should be able to lawfully possess (if any at all). Regardless, they still think it's fine to mention "50 mm machine guns" as the kind of weapons being used (there's no such thing), and pound on and on, without ANY direct evidence, that these weapons both come from civilians in the US, and are coming due to the lapse of the so-called assault-weapons ban.
Perhaps COHA should *start* by asking people who actually know their subject matter, BEFORE they start guessing and drawing unsupportable conclusions.
The Mexican cartels, the Colombian cartels, perhaps even some corrupt Latin American governments are major players in the drug and weapons trafficking business. I find it surprising, however, that in a business where the main article for sale is a product (cocaine, specifically) with a significantly lower price just South of the Border than after it has crossed the border, never has a “boss” or a “cartel” or some sort of organization dealing with this much more valuable merchandise once North of the Border been identified or discussed. Is one expected to believe that Americans, the most ingenious marketeers and salesmen of all time, have relinquished the control of the two most lucrative businesses on earth – weapons and drugs – to a bunch of uncouth latinos? If the gun lobby is so powerful as to blindside a very large segment of the American society merely to protect their gains, is it possible to believe that under the guise of ill-interpreted constitutional rights, they are also a drug lobby? Perhaps not in direct payment of the non-existant American drug lords but certainly with their acquiesence and doubtless their indirect support.
Hopefully Mr. Calderón call for a debate on the illegality of drugs will find echo in the US and in the other Latin American countries. Forty years of the so-called drug war have failed to deliver any positive results. It is high time to begin looking for other options.
The researcher appears to have missed the most important U.S. law regulating automatic weapons. ALL automatic weapons in the USA are as tightly controlled by Federal law as are 105mm howitzers, shoulder fired missiles, and 500lb bombs. The relevant provisions are the Title 2/Class III provisions of the National Firearms Act of 1934 as amended by the Hughes Amendment to the McClure-Volkmer Act of 1986. The number of automatic weapons manufactured for the U.S. civilian market since 1986 is exactly zero.
Nor did the 1994 "assault weapon" non-ban hinder sales of semiautomatic rifles (including civilian AR-15 type rifles and AK lookalikes) at all between 1994 and 2004, because that law didn't ban any guns. Rather, it banned listed *features* by instituting a 1-feature limit. A post-1994 civilian AK could have either a protruding handgrip OR a bayonet lug OR a folding/adjustable stock OR a threaded muzzle, but could not have two or of those features. Hence, civilian AK's 1994-2004 had smooth muzzles, fixed stocks, and no bayonet lugs, but more were sold 1994-2004 than in all the prior decades combined (mine is a 2002 model). Ditto for AR-15 type rifles. Nor did the law affect magazine capacities of rifles using standardized magazines, except to vastly increase magazine imports.
I have no doubt that the Zetas are using quite a few U.S.-made automatic weapons, but U.S. law already restricts those weapons to police/military/government and their suppliers, and has for decades. It is a very safe bet that those weapons are being diverted from the Mexican military, not the U.S. military or U.S. police agencies.
As far as the actual automatic AK-47's and RPG's used by the cartels, those have never been manufactured in the USA and almost none have been imported, ever. They are abundant in Central America, though—the legacy of decades of Cold War proxy wars—and it is not too hard to guess where they are coming from.
They will Kill a lot of American in their Contry Using the weapons they sold to Mexican Mafia, Everything goes back… They already started in Tx and Az…