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How “straw purchasers” in the U.S. find a big bang for their buck for Mexico’s drug thugs Crucial to the flow of guns into Mexico are networks of straw buyers — U.S. citizens with clean criminal backgrounds bankrolled by the cartels to shop for guns. Two kinds stalk South Texas: ordinary people with perhaps only a sneaking suspicion about who’s ultimately paying them; and those much more … [Read more...] about Gunrunning to Mexico Part III: Buyers remorseless

How flexible laws, a blissful ignorance and profit motive enable U.S. gun retailers to feed Mexico’s bloody civil war International gun trafficking prosecutions against licensed gun dealers are relatively rare. The law provides more protection to sellers than to any other part of the supply chain delivering weapons to Mexico’s drug cartel foot soldiers. Much of the current U.S. law … [Read more...] about Gunrunning to Mexico Part II: The sellers: merchants torn between profit and conscience

These stories document Mexico’s black market hunger for American guns. The hidden cross-border trade is hardly a new phenomenon and for decades has occupied a back burner in the national policies of both countries. But with Mexico’s drug war body count surpassing 6,000 in a single year, 2008, a figure that almost flatters the number of American dead in Iraq, the weapons smuggling issue has been … [Read more...] about Gunrunning to Mexico Part I: Gunrunner’s Land of Plenty