Mexico still blames Americans for Mexico’s gang violence

Written by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it will consider dismissing the Mexican government’s lawsuit in the Mexican government’s case Smith & Wesson Brands v Estados Unidos Mexicanos. The Mexican government alleges that Smith & Wesson and wholesaler Witmer Public Safety Group Inc. deliberately conspiring with intermediaries to supply Mexican cartels with weapons.

The Mexican plaintiffs have done so of course I never really proved this, and this is all part of a larger effort by the Mexican regime and its advocates, who have been looking for a scapegoat to blame for Mexico’s runaway murder rate over the past two decades. In reality, the Mexican government would do well to look a little closer to home. Mexico’s crime problems result from Mexico’s corrupt state, its centralized government – ​​which is a federal government in name only – and the fact that Mexico actually bans gun ownership for peaceful, law-abiding citizens.

In the past I have discussed in detail the ways in which Mexican crime is a result of Mexican law and illegal arms trafficking Mexican weapons in Mexico. At the heart of Mexico’s failed claims is the fact that guns are much more common in the United States than in Mexico, while crime in Mexico is much worse. Even along the border, U.S. border cities have far less crime than Mexican cities on the other side of the border. Legal guns abound on the American side of the border. On the Mexican side, the Mexican government ensures that weapons are largely in the hands of the cartels. Or, as I put it in 2018:

Like much of Latin America, Mexico is a country with strict gun laws but high murder rates.

So how to explain the problem?

Well, in the case of Mexico, the answer for gun control activists is to blame the United States: “One way for Mexicans to get around their country’s strict gun laws is to simply walk across the border.”

The logic continues accordingly: the presence of more guns means more murder. And while Mexico has strict gun laws, Mexico is unfortunately close to the United States, where guns can be easily purchased. Guns are then introduced into Mexico, where they lead to a higher murder rate.

There are some problems with this logic. Even if we include all the black market guns in Mexico, gun totals in the US are still much higher. That is, according to the 2007 Small Arms Survey, it is estimated that there are about 15 million privately owned guns in Mexico, on the high side. Even if we take into account an additional increase since 2007, we are looking at a rate of less than 20 guns per 100 inhabitants in Mexico. In the United States, by contrast, that total is about 100 guns per 100 residents.

So if you want to attribute Mexico’s violence problem to “more guns,” you have to explain why there are more than five times as many guns in the US, with only a tiny fraction of the murders.

Moreover, the oft-cited statistic that suggests that as many as 70 percent or even 90 percent of weapons seized in Mexico come from the U.S. is not true. That statistic is based only on seized weapons that are also tracked by the ATF. How many of all guns seized in Mexico come from the US? According to Stratfor it is “Nearly 90 percent of the weapons seized in Mexico in 2008 were not traced back to the United States.” The Mexican government also does not ask the ATF to track all weapons seized in Mexico.

This is because many of those weapons can be traced back to the Mexican government itself.