From Nick Penzenstadler’s exclusive article at USA Today:

Hacked data reveals which US gun sellers are behind Mexican cartel violence

A massive leak of Mexican military intelligence has exposed for the first time in two decades U.S. gun shops and smugglers tied to 78,000 firearms recovered south of the border – and which types of guns are being trafficked.

The nuggets of information are among roughly 10 million records hacked by an anonymous collective known as ‘Guacamaya’ and shared with news outlets by the transparency organization Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDoSecrets. The Mexican Defense Ministry leak previously made headlines for exposing military corruption and surveillance abuse, and now reveals the trace data on American-sold firearms recovered since 2018.

Despite efforts to stem the flow, these American firearms are smuggled south as part of the cycle of Latin-American narcotics headed north. The violence in Central America fueled, in part, by guns also has contributed to the migration crisis at the U.S. border.

It’s a “cycle” he says? Well, then why don’t both nations secure the border and end the cycle? Seems like an obvious solution to me, but what do I know?

But I digress—anyway, as Penzenstadler reports, firearms that were originally sold in the U.S. have somehow made their way south of the border to criminal factions in Mexico and the lower Americas, which is ostensibly fueling the violence that this part of the world is known for, which is “in part” to blame for the the “migration crisis” plaguing the U.S. today—yeah, okay—and all of this is the fault of the small-time gun stores and American gun makers because if it weren’t for their products and store policies, then there wouldn’t be so many “bodies on the streets” in Mexico and beyond.

Yet…Penzenstadler accidentally said the quiet part out loud:

As part of the leak, emails relaying U.S. government data between Mexican military leaders and PowerPoint presentations by Mexico’s attorney general show which American straw buyers were tied to the most weapons as of 2022.

…

Of the other six top purchasers, half are linked to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives scandal known as Fast and Furious.

…

Hundreds of Fast and Furious firearms have previously been traced to other shootings in Mexico. The new leak indicates hundreds more are still being found.

Penzenstadler honed in on the top seven “straw purchasers by number of recovered guns (2020-2022)” which found a total of 476 guns tied to arms trafficking…and three of those seven individuals were involved in the Fast and Furious (FAF) gunwalking scandal:

The top purchaser identified by Mexico in the documents is Uriel Patiño, who served a 70-month prison sentence after taking a plea deal in 2014. Patiño was notorious for being the top straw purchaser in the Fast and Furious debacle, purchasing 700 guns under ATF’s watch. CBS reported that two AK-style Romanian-made, U.S.-sold WASR-10 rifles purchased by Patiño ended up at a crime scene in Culiacán in 2013.

Two other purchasers, Sean Christopher Steward and Carlos Armando Celaya – both prosecuted in the Fast and Furious operation – also appear in the data.

The three “top purchaser” men provided more than half of the firearms to the trafficking trade; that number was 288 out of 476, which equals about 61% of the firearms. So less than half of the people named as “top” buyers contributed more than half of the guns, and this minority was known by a purported law enforcement agency. The government did more damage than anything? Imagine that.

The validity of the information contained in the leak was reportedly corroborated by Alejandro Celorio; Celorio is a lawyer who serves as a “legal adviser to Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs” and is heading up a Mexican lawsuit against “American gun manufacturers and five Arizona gun shops” for their alleged role in the cartel and gang violence seen across Mexico and the lower Latin nations—but we know who the real culprit is, and that is the federal government and all their illegal federal agencies full of stupid bureaucrats.

Yet, if you read the entirety of Penzenstadler’s piece, you can rightfully infer that the implied “solution” is to ramp up gun control initiatives, target these small-time shops and manufacturers, and use the law to “pressure” them into leaving the firearms industry; Penzenstadler refers to the Tiahrt Amendment as legislation that “shields” gun-dealing businesses from “scrutiny” (the clause simply prohibits the ATF from demanding inventories from gun sellers and releasing “trace” data to the public), but he also basically sounds the alarm on allowing the use of cash at gun stores, saying cash is an “indicator” of gun-running.

Here’s some leftist (il)logic though, just put up a sign at the border that says “No Gunrunning” or “This is a Gunrunning-Free Zone” Shouldn’t that do the trick? Furthermore, Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, so how is it possible that so many firearms still wind up being used in criminal activity? Weird.

One of the ATF’s biggest scandals just got a whole lot more scandalous.

Image: Public domain.