page_title: Smuggling of firearms into Mexico
section_title: Project Gunrunner
hierarchical_section_title: Smuggling of firearms into Mexico / Project Gunrunner
caption_attribution_description: English: M4 Carbine with M203 Grenade Launcher Attached.
context_page_description: Mexicans have a right to own firearms, but legal purchase from the single Mexican gun shop in Mexico City, controlled by the Army, is extremely difficult. Guns smuggled into Mexico are sometimes obtained at gunshops in the United States and carried across the US-Mexico border. In other cases the guns are obtained through Guatemalan borders or stolen from the police or military. Consequently, black market firearms are widely available. Many firearms are acquired in the U.S. by women with no criminal history, who transfer their purchases to smugglers through relatives, boyfriends and acquaintances who then smuggle them to Mexico a few at a time. The most common smuggled firearms include AR-15 and AK-47 type rifles, and FN 5.7 caliber semi-automatic pistols. Many firearms are purchased in the United States in a semi-automatic configuration before being converted to fire as select fire machine guns. Mexico seized in 2009 a combined total of more than 4,400 firearms of the AK-47 and AR-15 type, and 30% of AK-47 type rifles seized have been modified to select fire weapons, effectively creating assault rifles.
context_section_description: ATF Project Gunrunner has a stated official objective to stop the sale and export of guns from the United States into Mexico in order to deny Mexican drug cartels the firearms considered "tools of the trade".  However, since 2006 under Project Gunrunner, Operations "Fast and Furious", "Too Hot to Handle", "Wide Receiver" and "White Gun"  (all together satirically dubbed "Operation Gunwalker"), are alleged to have done the opposite by ATF permitting and facilitating 'straw purchase' firearm sales to traffickers, and allowing the guns to 'walk' and be transported to Mexico.  This has resulted in considerable controversy.
  According to ATF agents, Mexican officials were not notified, and ATF agents operating in Mexico were instructed not to alert Mexican authorities about the operation. Some ATF agents and supervisors strongly objected, and gun dealers (who were cooperating with ATF) protested the sales, but were asked by ATF to complete the transactions to elucidate the supply chain and gather intelligence.  The gun-rights group Gun Owners of America accused the ATF of attempting to "boost statistics of seized firearms with American commercial provenance from Mexican crime scenes."
  In 2011, KNXV-TV reported that weapons linked to the controversial ATF strategy were recovered in four police seizures of drugs and guns in the Phoenix area (two in Glendale, two in Phoenix).
  As of 2011 report, total of 372 Fast and Furious firearms were recovered in the United States, and 195 were recovered in Mexico.
  In 2010, Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered in a shootout in Arizona with drug cartel members. Cartel member Manuel Osorio-Arellanes pleaded guilty in 2012 to first-degree murder in the case and was sentenced in 2014 to 30 years in prison; according to Osorio-Arellanes, four other cartel members perpetrated the attack. Two rifles from the "Fast and Furious" operation were found at the scene of the crime, but there is no evidence proving that Terry was killed with either of those guns.
caption: M4 Carbine with Grenade launcher(locally called Chanate, Mexican Spanish for "great-tailed grackle").
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