From Minnesota to Mexicali: Connecting the Dots with Trafficked Firearms‪.‬

STORIES OF MEXICAN drug cartels' bloody and relentless efforts to flood American streets with narcotics have frequented our headlines for well over a decade, but only more recently have the larger dynamics of the trade been widely circulated. While Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) inject drugs into American communities, American criminals often supply the firepower for Mexico's street violence. DTOs use proceeds from their estimated $19-29 billion annual profits (1) to arm their operations. And arm them well. Between 2009 and 2010, 34,000 firearms were seized by Mexican authorities from criminal groups. (2) As a result, Mexico, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, regards trafficked firearms as the number-one threat to its national security. (3) This threat originates close to home: the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that 87 percent of firearms seized in Mexico and successfully traced led back to the United States, (4) resulting in what Congress has described as an "unfettered access" to American firearms. (5) Although estimates vary, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime places the number of firearms trafficked across the border at 20,000 annually. (6) This access has undoubtedly escalated the violence on both sides of the border, which in Mexico has resulted in 50,000 people killed since 2006, including over 12,000 in 2011 alone. (7)