ATF takes aim at deep 'Iron river of guns' [View All]

[RamboLiberal]

Source: USA Today

Guns recovered in some of the largest recent weapons seizures in Mexico are being traced deep into the United States — miles from the volatile border — revealing an expanding trafficking network that feeds Mexico's violent drug cartels, according to government documents and U.S. investigators.

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives records show 90% of the weapons recovered and traced originate from a growing number of sources spanning from the Northwest to New England. The trafficking routes have created what Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., described earlier this week as an "iron river of guns" flowing to the warring cartels, contributing to about 7,000 deaths in the past 14 months.

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Four months after the largest weapons seizure in Mexican history, U.S. investigators have traced 383 of the more than 400 weapons seized from a stash house in Reynosa, Mexico, to 11 states including Ohio, South Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Michigan and Connecticut, according to ATF records.

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Escalating violence in the battle to control the lucrative drug trade in Mexico has increased the demand for weapons, while the cost for firearms along the U.S. side of the border has soared, Hoover said. Those market forces drive traffickers far into the interior of the United States in search of new and cheaper supplies of firearms.

Denise Dresser, a political science professor at Mexico's Autonomous Institute of Technology, told a Senate panel Tuesday that up to 2,000 weapons per day flow into Mexico from the United States.




Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-03-18-cartelguns_N.htm