The Arizona shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has resonated for many in Mexican states terrorized by drug gangs that often use weapons smuggled from the United States.
The Arizona shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) and
the ensuing debate over gun laws is resonating in Mexico, where drug
trafficking gangs, often armed with weapons smuggled from the US, are carrying
out a violent campaign in which assassinations and mass shootings are all too
common.
The governor of Sonora, the Mexican state bordering
Arizona, said Monday that the shooting raises security concerns on both sides
of the border. Gov. Guillermo Padrés Elías said he’ll discuss arms trafficking
at his next meeting with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer that has yet to be scheduled
after bilateral relations chilled last April over Arizona’s tough new
immigration law.
“We will make ourselves available to Arizona and the
United States to keep collaborating with them on this, so that weapons we all
know are easy to acquire in the United States do not keep coming to
Mexico," said Governor Padrés Elías, according to Spanish-language daily
newspaper El Universal.
Mexico has long called on the US to crack down on weapons
smuggling and to renew a federal assault weapons ban. The administration of
President Felipe Calderón has said that 90 percent of arms seized from cartels
come from the US and are used against police and civilians in ever more violent
confrontations.
It is often difficult in Mexico – where military caliber
weapons are strictly forbidden and few gun shops exist – to understand US views
on gun possession.
“It’s a contradiction, because a lack of control over
weapons has generated all kinds of violence and yet they will keep selling
guns,” says Jose Ramos, a security expert at the Colegio de Frontera Norte in
Tijuana.
He says that US border checkpoints have had minimal
success in stopping the flow of guns into Mexico.
Arizona may have a unique role to play in the flow of
weapons. After Texas, the state’s gun shops sell the most arms seized in
Mexico, says Thomas Mangan, special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives in Phoenix, Ariz.
Semiautomatic Glock pistols, like the Glock 19 reportedly
used by alleged shooter Jared Lee Loughner, have occasionally cropped up in
cartel arsenals, although it is not considered a “weapon of choice” like more
high-powered rifles, explains Mr. Mangan.
Gun control advocates have come down especially hard on
Arizona, which recently relaxed concealed gun laws, allowing almost anyone to
carry a concealed weapon.
However, pro-gun possession groups say that far fewer US
arms end up in Mexico than the Calderón government claims. They argue that the
assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 would not have prevented the shooter
from purchasing his gun or high-capacity magazines, as some critics suggest.
Congresswoman Giffords herself has been an advocate of gun possession.
But to many here, the Jan. 8 tragedy in Arizona that
killed six people aged 9 to 79 and seriously injured Giffords, is a sign that
lax gun control in America now hitting closer to home.
“What happened in Arizona is just something we live with in
Mexico thanks to the unchecked sale of arms in that country,” tweeted Juan
Antonio from Tamaulipas, a Mexican border state crippled by drug violence.