Cross-Border Anxiety

While folks in the USA worry about illegals and drugs, folks in Mexico worry about drugs and guns:

HOUSTON – Houston has become the top source for firearms going into Mexico, supplying drug cartel gangsters with weapons for their deadly battles, according to federal law enforcement officials.

"Our investigations show Houston is the top source for firearms going into Mexico, top source in the country," J. Dewey Webb, special agent in charge of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' Houston division, said in the Houston Chronicle.

Federal law enforcement officials said gangsters have chosen Houston because of its numerous gun shops, proximity to the border and its long-established networks for smuggling narcotics into the United States.

Mexican officials estimate 90 percent of nearly 27,000 weapons seized from stash houses or recovered from crime scenes in the past two years came from the U.S.

Authorities say numerous crimes, including a 2007 Acapulco massacre, show the carnage brought on by Houston-bought guns.

ATF is targeting at least three Houston groups it contends supply weapons to the Gulf Cartel, which operates along the Texas-Mexico border, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court.

Agents working with their Mexican counterparts have traced at least 328 Houston-bought firearms to those groups since 2007, when the investigation was launched after an audit of a gun store's sales records.

...U.S. officials have an obligation to do more to keep guns on this side of the border, Mexican authorities said.

"All the weapons the drug syndicates are using in Mexico come across the border from the United States," said Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico's ambassador to the U.S.