Not So Neighborly: The Negative Impact of Lax U.S. Gun Laws on Mexico & Canada
On April 26, at an NRA event in Indianapolis, President Trump moved to withdraw the U.S. from the United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which sets global standards for regulating the transfer of conventional arms. He pulled out a pen on stage and made an animated gesture of signing — or should I say un-signing — a piece of paper that he said would overturn Obama’s signage of the ATT (which the U.S. came on board for in 2013 but never ratified) [1].
A la 2017’s Puerto Rican Paper Towel Toss™, Trump then threw his pen into the crowd.
Sigh.
Detractors of the withdrawal abound. Rachel Stohl, an arms trade expert who helped draft the treaty, said shortly after Trump’s renouncement, “Today the President once again walked away from America’s leadership role in the world and undermined international efforts to reduce human suffering caused by irresponsible and illegal arms transfers” [2].
The U.S.’s actions on gun control have a ripple effect around the world, not the least of which is felt by our neighbors to the south, whose security has been compromised by the gun-riddled drug war that rages on its streets. In 2017, Mexico’s deadliest year on record, 66 percent of the country’s nearly 30,000 homicides were committed using guns and the same goes for 68 percent of robberies [3, 4].
It should be noted that there is only one gun store in Mexico, and it stands on the outskirts of Mexico City behind the walls of a heavily guarded military base. To purchase any weapons, six documents are required and customers are frisked by uniformed soldiers. They only sell about 38 guns a day, so unless the world’s most efficient assassin is on the loose in Mexico, these crimes are being committed by people using illegal weapons that are coming from somewhere else [5].
And you don’t have to look far to find out where: it is estimated that approximately 580 illegal weapons are smuggled into the country from the U.S. every day [6], and approximately 70 percent of guns recovered by Mexican law enforcement from 2011 to 2016 were originally purchased Stateside [7]. These statistics, and many others, stand in stark contrast to the Trump administration’s refrain that violent crime is pouring into the U.S. from Mexico, an idea that dismisses that the movement of goods and services at our borders goes both ways.
And international gun trafficking is by no means limited to our southern border. Our neighbors to the north, though experiencing nowhere near the levels of gun violence in Mexico, still feel the effects of lax U.S. gun regulations. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, 98.5 percent of guns recovered in Canada by law enforcement from 2011 to 2016 originated in the U.S. [8].
Strong gun laws in both Mexico and Canada (read: they both ratified the ATT) are undermined by the countries’ proximity to the U.S. [9]. They’re the bread on a gun-loving sandwich, if you will.
Many of the same weaknesses that contribute to the illegal trafficking of guns domestically also contribute to the illegal movement of those weapons internationally. Thus, policy solutions need to be put in place to codify and regulate the movement of arms within the U.S. in order to quell the violence we see abroad.
One such solution is instituting universal background checks for gun purchases, including closing the loophole in federal law that only requires licensed gun dealers to perform background checks on buyers; nothing is said of private transactions made by individuals who are not dealers [10]. This escape clause allows for an innumerable amount of guns to be sold under the table.
Another gap in federal law that needs to be closed is the one that allows people who have illegally trafficked weapons themselves or sold weapons to individuals prohibited from owning guns to only be prosecuted for a paperwork violation. A paperwork violation. That’s right, there is no specific federal offense for gun trafficking [11].
Further solutions include requiring more extensive reporting on gun sales, requiring increased access to the data from trafficking/sales and enacting measures that strengthen weapons oversight (like the one Trump just un-signed).
In an effort to bring an end to gun violence, The International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) is mounting a week-long campaign to bring awareness to the issues surrounding gun violence and weapons trafficking. Follow @IANSA and the #WeekofAction to stay up to date with the campaign and learn how you can contribute to their global efforts, including those aimed at putting an end to the flow of weapons coming out of the U.S.
References
1. Chappell, Bill. “Trump Moves To Withdraw U.S. From U.N. Arms Trade Treaty.” NPR, 26 April 2019. Accessed 23 May 2019. <https://www.npr.org/2019/04/26/717547741/trump-moves-to-withdraw-u-s-from-u-n-arms-trade-treaty>
2. Ibid.
3. Parsons, Chelsea and Vargas, Eugenio Weigend. “Beyond Our Borders: How Weak U.S. Gun Laws Contribute to Violent Crime Abroad.” Center for American Progress, 2 February 2018. Accessed 23 May 2019. <https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/guns-crime/reports/2018/02 /02/445659/beyond-our-borders/>
4. Meixler, Eli. “With Over 29,000 Homicides, 2017 Was Mexico’s Most Violent Year on Record.” Time, 22 January 2018. Accessed 23 May 2019. <http://time.com/5111972/mexico-murder-rate -record-2017/>
5. Linthicum, Kate. “There is only one gun store in all of Mexico. So why is gun violence soaring?” Los Angeles Times, 24 May 2018. Accessed 23 May 2019. <https://www.latimes. com/world/la-fg-mexico-guns-20180524-story.html>
6. Ibid.
7. “Mexico Trace Statistics.” Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information. Accessed 23 May 2019. <https://www.atf.gov/firearms /docs/report/firearms-trace-data-mexico-cy-11–16pdf/download>
8. Meixler
9. Parsons & Vargas
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
