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Security & Strategic Review - October 2015 (ISSN 1741-4202)

MEXICO: Where the guns have been turning up

In the year to the end of last June the authorities seized 413 firearms from suspected members of organised crime. Just under two-thirds of them were picked up in three states ― Tamaulipas, Guerrero and Jalisco ― and 74 of them were long-barrelled weapons of a military-issue kind. The new data comes from the annual report of the federal procurator-general’s office (PGR), submitted last month to congress.

Tamaulipas accounted for 34% of all seizures, Guerrero and Jalisco for just under 14% each. Next among the top five sources were Sinaloa (10%) and Sonora (8%). Attempts have been made to correlate these figure with the data on major crimes and produce a new ‘map of violence’, but they have stumbled on the same problem as when trying to calculate the flows of illegal drugs from the amounts seized by the authorities. Seizures can indicate either the efficiency of the law-enforcement agencies or the ability of the criminals to elude them.

What has attracted much attention is the type of firearms seized by the Mexican authorities: 74% were long-barrelled (rifles and machineguns). The PGR report classifies the breakdown by calibre, showing three types of assault rifles accounting for 71% of all seizures: 48% were 7.62 x 39mm (typically the AK-47 type); 18% were .223 (typically the AR-15) and 5% were 5.56 x 45mm (typically the HK-G36).

In the year under review the authorities also seized 66 explosive artifacts and munitions. Of these, 32% were fragmentation grenades, 29% were 40mm munitions for grenade launchers, and 23%, different kinds of anti-personnel mines.

With the last year’s information the PGR has built up a database of 9,180 firearms and 2,108 grenades, the provenance of which it is trying to track. As we reported in June, data published by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) show that the US was probably the main source of slightly more than 45% of the 26,430 illegal firearms seized by the Mexican authorities and sent in 2011-14 to the US for tracing [SSR-15-06].

The PGR report also said that in the year reviewed 31 members of 10 cartels had been tried and convicted. There is no strong correlation between the arms-seizure geography and that of the organised crime groups affected. Tamaulipas, top of the arms-seizure league, yielded 5 convictions (4 of Los Zetas, one of Golfo), second-ranking Guerrero also yielded 5, all of them of members of Los Rojos (but none of Guerreros Unidos, main actors in the Iguala massacre), and third-ranking Jalisco yielded 6 (3 each of the Sinaloa-Pacífico and Jalisco Nueva Generación cartels). The biggest number of convictions (9) was of members of the Beltrán Leyva organisation, originally associated with fourth-ranking Sinaloa.

Firearms seized from organised crime

September 2014-Jun 2015

 

Tamaulipas

142

Sinaloa

43

Guerrero

57

Sonora

32

Jalisco

56

Country total

413

Source: PGR

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