Mexico holds the number five ranking worldwide in arms trafficking

The president of the National Security Commission, Alejandro Encinas Rodriguez, affirmed that criminal groups own 65 percent of the illegal weapons that exist in Mexico, and the other 35 percent are in the hands of civilians for personal protection.

Encinas Rodriguez said that in the last decade, Mexico went from being 22 on the worldwide ranking of arms trafficking to become the number five, this due to the more than two thousand illegals weapons that enter the country every day, used by drug cartels, organized crime and also for self-defense.

This situation has opened a black market with an enormous potential of 127 million dollars yearly, only counting personal trafficking.

Because of this, he considers necessary a restructuration of all the politics regarding the battle against arms trafficking and analyze which model will be followed in Mexico against this problem, the absolute prohibition one, the control and registration, the free access or a new modality of control and disarmament.

He added that the weapons come more often from European countries, which could raise the violence levels in the country.



In the other hand, Encinas Rodriguez said that there is a disagreement regarding the participation of Mexico in the peace missions of the United Nations, since the country should first take a look in the inside political manners to define the role that the Army plays in order to strengthen the civil authorities regarding public security; “instead of opening a new front, with out having the house clean.”

The Senator Gabriela Cuevas Barron pointed out that in the United States there is an average yearly acquisition of 253 thousand weapons to enter Mexico illegally, which had ended mostly in the hand of the organized crime.

She underlined that this arms trafficking is linked to the increase of violence in some areas of the country, because after the United States’ decision of prohibiting the selling of weapons to the public, homicides in Mexico increased dramatically; only from 2004 to 2012 the deaths from homicides tripled. Also after this decision, the organized crime organizations started to practically have unlimited access to all kind of armament.