GUNS - Attempt to Track Gun Trafficking to Mexico

"Gun Dealers in Border States Face New Reporting Requirements" PBS Newshour Transcript 7/14/2011 (includes video)

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (Newshour): In an effort to stem illegal trafficking of firearms across the border with Mexico, the Justice Department has announced new rules on gun sales in four Southwestern states. Gun store owners in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas will be required to report anyone who buys two or more semiautomatic weapons within a five-day period.

It's the Obama administration's first gun control initiative. And it's been greeted with mixed reaction.

Evan Perez of The Wall Street Journal has been following the story, and he joins us now.

It seems, Evan, like a minor change on the surface, but there's been a lot of talk about it.

EVAN PEREZ, The Wall Street Journal: Right.

And it's something that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms has wanted to do for many years. However, they have just never been able to get it -- there's a lot of - a lot of problems with getting some of this through Congress. So what they have decided to do is make this essentially a rule. And they're going to send out letters in the next few weeks to about 8,500 gun shops along the border states that you mentioned to essentially create a reporting requirement, so they can have some paperwork to find out when someone comes in and buys, say, five, 10 AK-47-style rifles, which, you know, are the type of weapons that the drug cartels in Mexico are using to carry out some of the violence.

GWEN IFILL: Now, describe specifically what kinds of weapons we're talking about. You say AK-47-style.

EVAN PEREZ: Right. They're the -- they're the -- they're mostly like Romanian-type -- Romanian-made AK-47-style weapons. They are semiautomatic. They're very potent. And, essentially, they are the favorites of the cartels in Mexico.

GWEN IFILL: Is this a big problem? Is there a huge -- a huge trafficking in these kinds of guns across the border?

EVAN PEREZ: There is, as far as we can tell. The Mexican government says, you know, there's about 80 percent of the firearms that they have confiscated -- and they have put it at, you know, 70,000 in recent years -- you know, has -- comes from the United States.

It's hard to get really hard figures on this. The GAO did a report saying there were about 20,000 between 2004-2008. And so we know that, in Mexico, it's very hard to buy firearms of any kind. Mexican law doesn't allow it. In the U.S., it's very easy to do that.

And so it goes to show, you know, that where you have a market, a market, a ready market and a place where it is very easy to get firearms, that you would have this kind of trade.