 In a case aimed at stemming the flow of U.S. weapons to the Mexican drug war, federal authorities indicted 20 men Tuesday on charges of buying an estimated 700 weapons in Arizona and conspiring to transfer them across the border, chiefly to the Sinaloa drug cartel.The arrests, carried out by at least 100 federal agents, began early Tuesday, the latest crackdown targeting an international trafficking network that authorities say has seen as many as 60,000 weapons seized in Mexico and traced to U.S. "The massive size of this operation sadly exemplifies the magnitude of the problem: Mexican drug lords go shopping for war weapons in Arizona," Dennis Burke, U.S. attorney in Arizona, said in a statement.Officials at the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said the case demonstrates the need to include long-barreled weapons in the requirement for gun sellers to report multiple weapon sales to a single buyer. and many gun owners as an inappropriate reach of federal authority.Gun advocates say many of the weapons in the hands of Mexican drug traffickers were acquired from weapons stocks officially supplied by the U.S. government to Mexico and other Latin American countries.The case involves the relatively common use of "straw purchasers," legal residents of the state who buy the weapons from licensed gun dealers and certify that they are for their own use, but end up selling the guns to the drug cartels.None of those charged in the indictments are licensed gun dealers.
– Twenty Phoenix-area men were indicted yesterday on charges of buying more than 700 guns—including AK-47 assault rifles—and conspiring to smuggle them to Mexican drug gangs. The accused acted as "straw purchasers," claiming that the weapons they bought were for their own use, when in fact they were going to a Mexican drug cartel, wrote the prosecutor. The Los Angeles Times reports that while there are no licensed gun dealers among those charged, the indictments do reveal a number of dealers that sold guns in large quantities to a single individual in a single day. In one instance, a Glendale, Ariz., dealer sold one of the defendants 26 AK-47 rifles on March 26; 10 on June 2; 16 on July 8; and 12 on Aug. 5—among other weapons. "The massive size of this operation sadly exemplifies the magnitude of the problem—Mexican drug lords go shopping for weapons of war in Arizona," read the prosecutor's statement. The indictment comes a day after Hillary Clinton visited Mexico and expressed support for its fight against the drug cartels, reports the BBC.