Iron River of Guns

Iron River of Guns: A Report from the Initiative, "Stop US Arms to Mexico."

The U.S. firearms market is generating growing storms of violence in neighboring countries. From Mexico – where traffickers in fentanyl and other criminal businesses are armed with thousands of U.S.-sourced assault weapons and .50 caliber rifles – to Haiti, where gangs armed with rifles easily purchased and smuggled from Florida and Georgia dominate and terrorize broad swaths of territory – the permissive, militarized and enormous gun trade in the United States is driving thousands of families to flee their homelands, arming the men who disappear people and commit femicide, empowering traders in narcotics that take thousands more lives, and looting economies.

The damage is not limited to Mexico and Haiti. Firearms homicides – just one indicator of gun harms – have grown in Jamaica, Barbados, Central America and other nations, in tandem with the retail proliferation of U.S. weapons. In Guatemala, the exponential growth of exports of U.S. pistols has fed weapons trafficking and homicide rates. The United States is not exempt, of course: there were more shootings in U.S. schools in the last three years than any prior year.

The concept frequently used for this violence is that of a pandemic: the health consequences of gun violence are severe and growing, with firearms and bullets as vectors and agents, respectively. But gun violence also behaves like a storm system in its violence and shattering effects. And the islands in which people may imagine that they are safe from these storms of gun violence are shrinking.

No Shelter from the Storm: Update on Iron River of Guns analyzes new data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act on trafficking of US guns to the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America, the state of Arizona as a locus of gun trafficking, the gun industry’s baseless arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, and how U.S. guns exported to Guatemala are used in violence. The report also compares gun exports globally under presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden, and makes several recommendations.

In July 2024, Stop US Arms to Mexico submitted a request to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for data on the zip code and county of purchase, type, make and caliber of firearms recovered in six Caribbean countries since 2015. We also requested information on the “time to crime” for each U.S. state of purchase, make, caliber, and type of firearms that were recovered in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean and traced to a U.S. purchase.

Click here for the report, "No Shelter from the Storm: Iron River of Guns."

from John Lindsay-Poland, American Friends Service Committee (1/30/2024)