U.S. gun laws blamed for worsening Latin American violence (x-post from GD)

[DanTex]

The shooting of an Australian baseball player has brought to light once again the fact that lax gun laws in the US harm more than just Americans. In fact, much of the gun violence in Mexico and Latin America is perpetrated with guns first purchased in American gun stores.

http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-us-gun-laws-violence-latin-america-20130731,0,4015750.story

Lax U.S. gun regulations are enabling the international trafficking of high-powered weapons and fueling the spread of gun violence in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Council on Foreign Relations argues in a report urging President Obama to take action on initiatives that have foundered in Congress.

More than 70% of the 99,000 weapons recovered by Mexican law enforcement since 2007 were traced to U.S. manufacturers and importers, the council report said, citing data from the eTrace program of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The figure for guns of U.S. origin recovered in the Caribbean is over 90%, the study noted.

“The flow of high-powered weaponry from the United States to Latin America and the Caribbean exacerbates soaring rates of gun-related violence in the region and undermines U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere,” states the council’s policy memo, written by Latin America studies director Julia Sweig.

...

Also, even though the statistics of guns traced to the US from Mexican crime scenes are staggeringly high, those numbers only represent a tiny fraction of the overall flow of guns from the US to Mexico, since most guns are not recovered by the police and traced successfully. In fact, a study examining the total gun flow has estimated that the number of guns trafficked to Mexico is a quarter of a million per year.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/18/186216/253000-us-guns-smuggled-to-mexico.html