About 70 percent of the guns seized in Mexico and submitted to a US gun-tracing program came from the US, according to a report released by three US senators on Monday.
Of the 29,284 firearms recovered by authorities in Mexico in 2009 and last year, 20,504 came from the US, according to figures provided to the senators by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
Most of those weapons — 15,131 — were US made, while another 5,373 were of foreign manufacture, but had moved through the US into Mexico.
The ATF said the remainder of the weapons total — 8,780 arms — were of “undetermined origin due to insufficient information provided.” The figure of the number of guns arriving in Mexico from north of the border has been polemical ever since a June 2009 US report covering earlier years said that 87 percent of guns seized in Mexico came from the US.
While the report did not specify why the percentage had changed, the most recent figures appear to included more gun-trace reports, as the reporting program in Mexico became easier to use.
Evidence that US weapons trafficking has been fueling a bloody drug war that has cost more than 35,000 lives in Mexico since late 2006 has angered many Mexicans.
On Saturday, in a speech to the Mexican-American community in San Jose, California, Mexican President Felipe Calderon lashed out at the US weapons industry.
“I accuse the US weapons industry of [responsibility for] the deaths of thousands of people that are occurring in Mexico,” Calderon said. “It is for profit, for the profits that it makes for the weapons industry.”
The report, issued by US Senator Dianne Feinstein and two other senators, recommended background checks for sales at gun shows, a ban on the import of nonsporting weapons and the reinstatement of the assault weapons ban in force in the US until 2004.
Calderon endorsed calls for reinstating the ban on domestic sales of assault rifles, saying its expiration in 2004 may have played a roll in the increase of drug violence in Mexico.
“You can clearly see how the violence began to grow in 2005 and of course it has gone on an upward spiral in the last six years,” Calderon said.
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