William W. Cummings

The Mexican military recovered 32 hand grenades and 29 40mm grenades in a raid on a Zeta training camp on May 10, 2010. (Photo: SEDENA)

Retailers in the U.S. are a major source of weapons for Mexican drug trafficking organizations, but many of their armaments are from military sources.

A U.S. State Department cable released Monday by WikiLeaks reveals that Mexican law enforcement recovered grenades, which the U.S government sold to the El Salvadoran military in the early 1990s. One of these grenades, a U.S. military M67 fragmentation grenade, was used in an attack on Televisa, a Monterrey TV station, during their evening news broadcast. Law enforcement officials identified that grenade from the fuse spoon and pull ring left behind at the scene.

Three South Korean K400 grenades were recovered in an abandoned armored car believed to have been used by traffickers as a getaway vehicle. The cable requests that U.S. Embassy officials in Seoul, “discreetly query the Korean government regarding the whereabouts, disposition, and the possibility of any missing stocks,” of South Korean-made grenades. Another Korean-made K75 grenade was thrown into a nightclub in Pharr, Texas on the U.S. side of the border, where the targets were three off-duty police officers. The grenade did not detonate.

Other recovered military hardware described in the cable includes 14 more U.S.-made M67 grenades, an unexploded U.S. M26A2 fragmentation grenade hurled at the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey on Oct. 21, 2008, 21 unidentified grenades from a narco warehouse, 25 40mm projectiles, and a U.S. M203 40mm grenade launcher,

Another cable provides detail of the case against Mexican Army Major Arturo Gonzalez, who was arrested on Dec. 21, 2008 for assisting drug trafficking organizations (DTO). The Jan. 20, 2009 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City says Gonzalez, “stands accused of leaking military intelligence, training [Arturo Beltran Leyva Organization] hit men through a private security company and supplying military weapons to various DTOs, including los Zetas.” Gonzalez was paid $100,000 a month for his services, beginning in 2005, according to the cable.

At the time of his arrest, Gonzalez was a part of President Felipe Calderon’s security team. He is accused of passing information about Calderon’s travel schedule and Calderon’s medical records to the cartels.

“The arrest represents the most serious security breach to date but is not surprising given high-level civilian Government of Mexico (GOM) corruption charges over the past six months,” the cable says.

Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) sponsored the budget amendment blocking the ATF request.

The budget bill passed in the Republican-led House of Representatives Saturday includes an amendment that blocks a request from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives [ATF] for emergency powers ATF officials say will help stop the flow of guns to Mexican drug cartels.

The ATF has asked that all firearms dealers in the four border states temporarily be required to report the sale of two or more rifles in less than five days to the same buyer.

“By obtaining information about these multiple sales, ATF increases the likelihood of uncovering and disrupting trafficking schemes before the firearms make their way into Mexico,” acting ATF Director Ken Melson said in a statement.

The Obama administration has yet to accept or reject the ATF request, but The Hill reports the bill would make that decision moot. The House budget bill’s fate will be determined in the Senate.

Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) sponsored the amendment, which passed 277 to 149.  According to The Hill:

Forty-one Democrats voted in favor of the bill, and two Republicans – Reps. Peter King (N.Y.) and Brian Bilbray (Calif.) – opposed it. King, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, has often been at odds with GOP leaders over gun reform.

“The ATF has no legal authority to demand these reports,” Boren said in statement. He said that ATF was trying to circumvent Congressional authority because there are not enough votes in the House to approve this new regulation.

“This new regulation would create a flood of new reports that will further waste already scarce law enforcement resources,” Boren added. The rule change would also, “compromise the privacy of their customers by cataloguing [sic] personal information in a database,” he said.

According to Boren’s website, “The amendment was fully supported by the National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation.”

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), an organization representing the firearms industry, says the rule change would make it more difficult for firearms retailers to identify suspicious buyers and alert the ATF because traffickers will begin to buy their guns at multiple locations.

“Illegal firearms traffickers engaged in acquiring firearms to smuggle into Mexico will simply and rapidly modify their illegal schemes to circumvent the reporting requirement,” the NSSF says.

A Romanian AK-47 and its accessories, imported by Century International Arms. (Photo by Geoffrey Fairchild, courtesy of Creative Commons)

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) called upon President Barrack Obama in a letter last week to use his executive authority to ban the importation of “military-style assault firearms.” This would help stop “the gun trafficking that is fueling the horrific gun violence in Mexico,” Feinstein wrote.

Previous presidents used a provision of the 1968 Gun Control Act, which only permits the importation of firearms that are “particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes,” to limit shipments of these types of semiautomatic rifles into the United States. This provision is not being aggressively enforced and guns that should ineligible for import are flowing into the United States, Feinstein says.

Among the firearms that have Feinstein concerned are, “cheap AK-type variants from former Eastern bloc countries.” The WASR-10, a Romanian version of the AK-47, is the gun most frequently recovered in Mexico and successfully traced back to the United States.

In her letter, Feinstein also asks Obama to stop the practice many importers employ of reassembling imported rifles with some domestically manufactured components in order to comply with import restrictions. This practice is in violation of the Gun Control Act, Feinstein says.

The National Rifle Association responded to Feinstein’s letter in a statement saying, “the ‘sporting purposes’ limitation imposed by the Gun Control Act of 1968 is constitutionally suspect, to put it mildly.” The “sporting purposes” criteria undermines citizens’ Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for self-defense, and “the law is ripe for a remedy,” the NRA statement says.

The NRA says the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has repeatedly misinterpreted the “sporting purposes test” for political reasons and faults Feinstein for, “encouraging yet another misinterpretation.”

The Romanian version of the iconic AK-47 is the leading gun recovered at Mexican crime scenes and successfully traced back to the United States, according to a recent report from PBS FRONTLINE in collaboration with the Investigative Reporting Workshop, Insight and the Center for Public Integrity.

WASR-10s found on Alfonso Gutierrez and his associates after a May 10, 2008 shootout with police. (ATF photo)

The WASR-10 is a relatively affordable, semiautomatic version of the AK-47. Century International Arms imports the weapons in compliance with the federal regulation which prohibit the importation of firearms that do not have a “sporting purpose.” The rifles are then reconfigured to include features that would have been illegal prior to importation, such as a detachable magazine capable of holding more than 10 rounds.

The rifles retail for as little as $400 but can fetch $2000 – $3000 in the Mexican black market. This profit margin creates high incentive for individuals to smuggle these weapons across the border.

WASR-10s have been recovered at some of the highest-profile crime scenes in Mexico. When cartel gunmen killed 8 police officers in Culiacan, WASR-10s were part of their arsenal; when Mexican Marines raided a Christmas party in an effort to capture cartel boss Arturo Beltran Leyva, his associates were armed with 10 WASR-10s.; when a gun battle erupted Acapulco in which 17 people died, one of the gunmen was armed with a WASR-10; and when police arrested Alfonso Gutierrez Loera, cousin to the infamous cartel boss Joaquin Guzman Loera, six WASR-10s were included in the 12 rifles found on him and his associates.

According to a recent ATF report, the WASR-10 makes up 17 percent of the guns recovered at Mexican crime scenes and successfully traced back to the United States.