The Iron River: Gun Trafficking, Mexico, and Violence

Award-winning journalist and author Ioan Grillo brings us face-to-face with the consequences of US gun policies on our southern neighbor in a discussion about his book "Blood Gun Money: How America Arms Gangs and Cartels." As Grillo unfolds how arms trafficking fuels the fires of gang and cartel violence in Mexico, we come to understand the stark contrast between Mexico's strict gun laws and the ease of obtaining firearms in the US via Grillo's firsthand accounts, including his coverage of the El Chapo trial, and put a human face on the statistics of violence that currently plagues Mexico.

Join us as we discuss our shared responsibility in addressing gun violence that knows no borders, and how easy access to firearms in the US plays a role in not just international violence, but also increases in migration and the US drug market. Together we delve into the ethical quandaries faced by gun sellers, the formidable influence of organizations like the NRA, and what we can all be doing to keep ourselves (and our neighbors) safe. 

Further reading:
America’s Complex Relationship With Guns (Pew Research Center)
Much of firearms traffic from the U.S. to Mexico happens illegally (NPR)
How American guns turned Mexico into a war zone (Los Angeles Times)
US-made guns are ripping Central America apart and driving migration north (the Guardian) 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

This is the legal disclaimer, where I tell you that the views, thoughts and opinions shared on this podcast belong solely to our guests and hosts, and not necessarily Brady or Brady's affiliates. Please note this podcast contains discussions of violence that some people may find disturbing. It's okay, we find it disturbing too. Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of Red, blue and Brady. I'm one of your hosts, jj.

Speaker 2: 0:47

And I'm Kelly, your other host.

Speaker 1: 0:48

And today, kelly and I are bringing you a podcast that has been in the works for quite a while, as we tackle a massive issue impacting not just the US but our neighbors to the South.

Speaker 2: 0:59

Yeah, we're going to be talking about the ways in which the US and our gun policies truly exacerbate and contribute to violence in Mexico. And super important because there's a lot of talk about it. There's a lot of xenophobia, there's a lot of stereotype thing, there's a lot of misinformation about this.

Speaker 1: 1:21

To really dig into what that misinformation is and where it came from, and with the realities out there. We are sitting down with award winning journalist and author of the book Blood Gun Money how America Arms Gangs and Cartels, mr Yohan Grillo. Yohan was so kind to sit down with us and really break down the reality of what's happening out there. So if you've had any conversations with anyone recently about the border guns, drugs, this is a podcast that I think you absolutely need to listen to.

Speaker 3: 1:51

My name is Yohan Grillo. I'm a journalist based in Mexico City, focused on organized crime and drugs. I've been here for 23 years doing this and I'm author of a trilogy of books on organized crime and drugs, the latest with which is Blood Gun Money how America Arms Guns and Cartels, focusing on the gun trafficking from the United States to Mexico and also from the United States to gangs and cartels all around the world.

Speaker 1: 2:20

And before we dig in, as you just mentioned, and to the most recent part of the trilogy, I'm wondering if you could share for us how this project developed and maybe how to end it all with Blood Gun Money. How did that all happen?

Speaker 3: 2:37

Yeah, so from my early days in Mexico it didn't originally come to Mexico, think I'm going to cover a crazy crime war I arrived in Mexico in 2000 and found out there's this emerging new conflict which were basically involving drug traffickers, organized crime networks, and in many cases it became worse and bloodier than these old political conflicts of the late 20th century. As I covered this, it went from being, at the beginning, quite romantic and exotic running after drug kingpins to really covering a humanitarian disaster and seeing many things I couldn't have imagined. And from the beginning I could see this is a huge issue of firearms trafficking from the United States. Now I wrote stories about this, but for a while I didn't think this was a whole book because I thought, well, the United States has the Second Amendment, what can we say? And then I happened to go in 2017 into a prison in Sierda Juarez an interviewer prisoner who was an active guns trafficker from Dallas into Chihuahua, mexico, and he described exactly how he was doing this. And he described how he was going to gun shows and buying from private sellers and doing this whole thing without paperwork at all, and how he was paying a cartel to move guns through over the border, paying another cartel to sell them, exactly how this was working and I realized that it was actually very interesting and there, actually, there's a lot of Americans who are very pro gun, very pro.

Speaker 3: 4:13

Second amendment would actually be against this as well. This is not like some political issue. This is something you can find, should be finding a middle ground on. And why is it still happening that this amount of guns is being trafficked? And then the amounts really became clear about the scale of this, because it was more than 200,000 firearms a year going to Mexico, particularly to cartels, in the time that I've been in Mexico.

Speaker 3: 4:38

We're talking about millions of guns and the total body count in Mexico just completely being off the charts. I mean now, since 2000, december 2006, when there's a military crackdown launched against these cartels armed with all these weapons, there's been almost 400,000 murders in Mexico. It's incredible. Perhaps two thirds of them linked to this conflict of cartels against the security forces. So it's been quite incredible to mention that this is actually something that you can't be, something to write a book about this and it's an issue, and that many of these issues on the war on drugs are very hard to solve. It's very hard to say how do you stop American state and drugs? It's very hard to say. How do you stop Mexican police officers and Mexican soldiers being corrupt, but saying how can we stop millions of guns being sold to really violent cartels is something we should be able to do something about.

Speaker 2: 5:29

And you talked a lot about already, about sort of, the broad scope of the issue of guns crossing from the United States to Mexico. But you started the book sort of at a very personal level, and you started it with the trial of Joaquin Guzman, or known as El Chapo. So why did you decide to start at that trial? I?

Speaker 3: 5:50

went to the trial in New York or some of the trial in New York in early 2019. And I think it was a very landmark event. El Chapo is maybe the most famous person from Latin America this century. It's kind of crazy to say. Probably more Americans, if you say if you heard of El Chapo, would say yes compared to if you've heard of Lopez Elbrador, the president of Mexico right now, or maybe as much as Che Guevara was maybe the most famous Latin American of the 20th century Very famous, and that trial particularly got a huge amount of attention in the American media.

Speaker 3: 6:28

It was a big show. One of the reasons and people from TV networks told me this is a trial, it was kind of to Americans it was almost like entertainment. It didn't seem to be this culturally divisive issue. It was like we could go, we could talk about El Chapo, this crazy gangster. We could talk about his beauty queen wife, we could talk about his lover, also as a protected witness, and all of these things and it was almost like a fun story.

Speaker 3: 6:52

But for a lot of the Mexican journalists who were there they were kind of a bit like this is not really that fun. We've seen this humanitarian catastrophe in our country over the last few years and this is a bit more of a serious thing happening here and one of the things was and it was very interesting they mentioned and bought up a massive drug gun running conspiracy at the trial, bought out all of these AK47s and grenade launchers and these kind of things and said these are the weapons that are going down to the cartel and we've got their thousands of them going. We've got proof of this. But they did not charge El Chapo with gun running, with federal conspiracy to, because we're a federal crime of trafficking guns and I realized right, there was no federal crime for trafficking guns at the time.

Speaker 3: 7:38

It was this kind of weird legal low point. Again, as I got into writing this book it was like it's very complicated to get into this. A lot of people have done for lying on the form rather than providing guns for a cartel, providing guns for a group which is committing mass murder even in cases where guns were used to kill an American agent in Mexico, jaime Zapata, and a guy who helped supply those guns very, very blatant crime walked in and bought 10 identical AK47s and only got probation for lying on the form. So I thought it was a very good kind of jubbing off point to kind of highlight that issue and also because it's something for the popular imagination, and also it was kind of something personally covering this for two decades being in this court with El Chapo, seeing this kind of very big historic moment about this whole situation.

Speaker 1: 8:31

Well, I think, as you've just articulated and as the book points out, it's sort of that there's loopholes within loopholes within loopholes. This is a very. I think the average American would think that the gun laws are very simple and very straightforward and once you've been in the space for five minutes you go oh, my goodness. No, this is actually very tangled and complicated and I wonder, just before we go any further, if you could explain for our listeners maybe, the difference between kind of legally purchasing a firearm and attempting or bringing it into Mexico or selling it to like a Mexican citizen, versus trafficking. Like what is trafficking actually in this context?

Speaker 3: 9:08

Yeah. So in Mexico you have one official shop in the whole country which sells guns and it's run by the military. It's here in Mexico City, where I am, and you can go there. You go through various lines of security and to buy a gun you have to give seven forms of identification, including a record from the police to show you you know you haven't got any pending crimes or criminal record, a letter from your employer. So it's a pretty strict process. But there are some, you know, still guns sold legally and there is in fact a kind of right to bear arms within the Mexican Constitution, but it's pretty heavily overseen. So a lot of people have guns in Mexico or security guards, paid security guards and that kind of thing.

Speaker 3: 9:53

At the same time there's this huge iron river of guns coming from the United States. Now, you know, it's obviously very easy to buy firearms in the United States and the two main methods they're being brought to take into Mexico are, I mean, sometimes okay, people buying through straw buyers, so somebody who's got a clean record going and buying guns in the shops or at the shows for these criminal groups. Now you could also be buying a gun for yourself with a clean record If you're taking it to Mexico, you're already committing a crime. You can't take a gun into Mexico over a border and then they've put signs up there because they look at the issue of gun trafficking. There's been some cases where Americans have legitimately legitimately not known or forgotten and kind of driven into Mexico with a couple of guns in their truck and then suddenly they're bringing guns across a border and then they're arrested and they're thrown in prison. It's like, well, I don't know, it's got some guns in my truck. Can't drive over a border carrying firearms. So you know you can't do that now, but what you know. So, basically anybody crossing over the border but there's some people just buy, you know, maybe taking a gun.

Speaker 3: 11:02

You might go to the United States and take a gun in for yourself, for your personal protection, but you're still committing a crime because you're not. You can do that. If you want to buy a gun imported to the United States, you have to register that with the Mexican military and go through a long process to do that. But what we're really talking about is the trafficking of guns to criminals is the main thing. So you have the groups acquiring these guns through either straw purchasing or through using the private sale loophole to get a large amount of guns with no paperwork. They could also get guns through, sometimes through unsurrealized firearms, you know ghost guns or through theft as well. But the biggest things really right now are straw purchasing and private sale loophole to acquire guns for the cartels.

Speaker 3: 11:57

Now they're acquiring these. You know these very, very large numbers often. You know different ways. Sometimes it can be somebody going shop to shop. So they go you know one shop by a 50 caliber, you know Browning go to the next shop, buy an AK, buy multiple AKs in certain states, which is still very easy to do so, acquiring these guns often in a series of places, having stash houses in the United States and then taking them to Mexico. Now they're being taken to Mexico either by fairly small numbers. So, for example, this one guy I profiled who I interviewed in prison in Juarez, was taking like 10 to 15 guns every weekend. It all adds up and it's quite a significant profit for him as an individual because he was buying them $6, $700 for a rifle in Dallas and selling them for like $2,200 in Mexico. So you know you're adding, you know you're doing 10 to 15 every weekend and you can do this on a decent amount of money for somebody who's, you know, in northern Mexico, and sometimes they're bigger amounts and there's been trucks stopped with 170 firearms and a big trucks going down to Mexico with that amount of guns in. And it can be various amounts in between.

Speaker 3: 13:15

Somebody else I profiled who was a smuggler, who was a US citizen and he was working for a company laying cable for communications on both sides of the border and using a government issued ID to smuggle guns into Mexico. He said, I mean, he said that, like I asked him, you know why he really did it, and he said, well, part of it was simply the buzz, part of it I mean, it is what he said he said one of the things you know, when he first got into it, one of the things that he was very angry about two pack being killed and he was like he felt like, oh, you know, I want to revenge on the world. You know, it's kind of kind of crazy stuff in people's own stories. And one one thing was, you know, eventually, the money. He's making the money as well, getting paid, paid for his trafficking and giving other information for the cartel and obviously the book is about guns.

Speaker 2: 14:05

It's also about drugs and the interplay between the two and you know I'm wondering how drugs play into further kind of contribute to the Iron River.

Speaker 3: 14:18

So yeah, it's a very interesting interaction between drugs and guns and you see, this with this issue of illegal gun trafficking, is totally entwined with the illegal you know drug drug trade. It's talked about this being like two toxic kind of plants entwined around each other. So you know, I went to Baltimore, maryland, you know close to where you are, and talk to some of the dealers. They're selling drugs on the streets, which also is kind of crazy when you see that, compared to some of the kind of armed conflict in Mexico with the drug trafficking, it's almost quite open drug selling in the United States and there's various reasons I've led to that. But people talk about how the fact people come to them with guns and they would exchange guns and drugs on the streets of Baltimore.

Speaker 3: 15:08

If you look at these gun traffickers big organizations like the CineLower Cartel they're moving huge amounts of drugs into United States and moving guns back and using the guns to violently defend a massive profit from the drug trade. If you go further south, to where cocaine is produced in Columbia, then you will see this exchange as well, where, because in Columbia the FARC, the leftist guerrilla army, could produce a huge amount of cocaine, but they want a lot of guns so they could exchange the cocaine for guns. Talk to one trafficker who was in prison in North Carolina who was flying cocaine from Columbia, from Venezuela, to Mexico and they'd fly back with guns. Now one thing is these people are businessmen, they're looking for the profits and why fly an empty plane down to Columbia to pick up cocaine? So put things in it, guns they've got as tequila and saddles and what other stuff they want to stash in there. So there's a constant interplay between firearms and drugs and you really can't understand the two trades kind of without it, just independently. They're kind of so connected.

Speaker 2: 16:20

I'm glad that you highlight that, because even now, where we're sitting, you know, there was the first Republican debate and the issue of fentanyl and cartels came up and there was this idea of, well, we just need to have some sort of military engagement, and you talked about the ways that loopholes and gun laws are a big part of this.

Speaker 3: 16:40

Well, I mean, I think it's interesting. I think this should be very much brought to attention during this debate. So the Republicans are bringing this up. Now I would say the Republicans are saying fentanyl is terrible and it's killing huge amounts of Americans, and that's very true. I think there does need to be a very deep debate and action taken and attempts taken to try and stop the level of drug overdose deaths in the United States right now. I mean it's crazy. I'm more than 100,000 overdose deaths per year. A lot of families are really hurting because of this. That's very, very genuine hurt.

Speaker 3: 17:12

Now, it's also true that cartels in Mexico are very, very violent organizations who are carrying out a humanitarian catastrophe. However, if they're then wrong in some quick, easy answer, you can just bomb Mexico to solve this. But if these people are saying these are terrorist organizations, if they're saying that, okay. If you want to name them as terrorist organizations, that means anyone involved in sending them guns is providing material to a terrorist organization. If they want to go down that road and there is an argument you can't say well, there's a lot of deaths here, but if you're going to go down that road, it means that you're going to have straw buyers, potentially gun shops, who could be convicted on providing material for terrorist organizations. Also, if you're going down that road of calling them terrorists, you're saying that the people who are fleeing that violence and arriving at the US border and asking for refuge, for asylum from these are fleeing people named as terrorists by the United States, which strengthens their case. So it kind of actually opens and changes the scenario here. But really, in answer back, I mean, okay, fair enough, if you want to bring up, this is a big issue about fentanyl deaths and a big issue about violence. So we've got to work that are not providing them guns.

Speaker 3: 18:28

And, like I said, this is something which I believe a midway can be found in this book and this research. I also interviewed the president of the AR-15, owners of America. I interviewed a militia member from Michigan. I interviewed the president of the Alaska Machine Gun Association and I asked them okay, are you in favor of guns going to cartels, are you in favor of this guns? And they were like no, no, no, I'm not into that, I know.

Speaker 3: 18:54

So even these people who represent quite a hard end of this could say well, we're in favor of this. So how come there can't be movement on a very basic issue, and there has been some change since this first edition of the book was published and since the lawsuit was made. We've seen the bipartisan community's safer communities acts, so we've seen things happening, but there needs to be enforcement of this and actually people arrested for gun trafficking and clamping down on gun trafficking the most obvious cases. How can it be that people are required? You have single straw buyers who are spending half a million dollars and acquiring 750 guns for cartels. How is that happening? You might have better reduced this to zero or you should better reduce this substantially.

Speaker 1: 19:38

There's so much there detailed in that, because and I want to tease this out a little bit further so when the guns hit Mexico that are brought in, can you kind of explain to listeners who may not be familiar, kind of maybe they know the words El Chapo and cartel but they don't quite know what that is or how that interacts, and then how it's not just guns in Mexico, right, the guns coming from the US to hit Mexico are then going throughout Latin America, which I know from reading your book.

Speaker 3: 20:04

But for folks who might not know. Yeah, sure, so in Mexico we've seen develop over a long period, particularly over the last two decades, the shift from drug trafficking networks into paramilitary organized crime and this means where you have criminal networks which also have armed paramilitary wings. And this has really been the last two decades. It didn't used to be like this in Mexico. You go back four or five decades and so suddenly you have people would have seen what is in videos and photos of this but like what are you gonna have groups which literally look like the guerrilla armies and they're carrying out terror in many communities in Mexico. I mean, this is what really what you've seen and what I've been covering here the last couple of years has been this weird hybrid between crime and war and what that really means on a personal level, again, to try and bring this home to people, because it can be quite hard. There's so much information that comes into our heads these days, so really what that means to people. So just an example of one story of a woman in Monterrey, mexico, who was in her home one night when with her two sons, one who was 18 and one who was 15, her 18 year old son was a philosophy student. Her 15 year old son was at high school and suddenly in her house, bam, the door breaks in and 15 guys come in who are like AK-47s, ar-15, bulletproof vests, storm into our house and that's what it's like if you're living these things happening. They also then carry out crimes against regular members of the community she was a school teacher, this woman. So they storm into our home, they hold the pin the family down and steal a bunch of stuff from the house and then they say to her which of your sons is the eldest? And she is so stunned hearing this question because like what do they wanna know that for? She can't answer and her elder son obviously doesn't want the younger brother taken. So he raises his hand and says it's me on the elder son and they take him away. The next day she gets a phone call saying we've got your son. Give us this amount of money in this particular place, we'll release him. So she calls around relatives, she wants the money. And what else can you do? You're a mother in that situation. What can you do? She gets the money, she leaves it in a place. The money is taken. She calls back, the phone's off the hook and bang and she's searching and searching and never finds her son.

Speaker 3: 22:31

One of the worst things about that kind of crime, as well as, obviously, just the fact that you're taking a life, is that she has no closure. She doesn't know where I say it. I met her when I was actually reporting on 49 bodies that had been dumped and she was like is my son among these bodies? And you get many cases like this. Is one single case. You get multiple cases of this of women who've been going around looking for their sons in these mass graves, some cases after two, three, four, five years, eventually finding some kind of skeleton and using DNA tests to identify that is their family member. But absolutely horrific.

Speaker 3: 23:10

So what that means and what these kinds of guns and what these cartels are really like on the ground, and again, why a series like Narcos can give certain ideas, but it gives kind of a glamorous side of this and really the brutal reality of what you see is pretty grim. It's kind of the killing fields as well. They move both from Mexico to other places and we've seen that very specific case of guns that we know that were traced and were smuggled into Mexico and then appeared in Colombia. So again, this thing of like well, they'll fly it out to pick up cocaine and take stuff down. We also see a big trafficking route through Florida where you have boats, all these boats coming in. So you have boats go from Florida across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Speaker 3: 23:52

So then we see guns going to Jamaica in a massive way and driving big violence in Jamaica to Haiti, to Honduras, to Brazil and to so many of these places. So we actually see not only that but, like the United States having the largest retail firearms market in the world and allowing these guns very easily to go out, affecting so many countries, and it's kind of historic case of violence which is contributing to these record numbers of people arriving at the border. Now I've been on the border recently and you talk to people from Jamaica who have fled violence in Jamaica, haiti, which is a crazy situation. I've just just just right, you know, yesterday in Mexico City I went to the migrant shelter. Yesterday there's people from Haiti, Nicaragua, venezuela, all these different countries fleeing for various reasons, but violence is certainly one of the top reasons that people are fleeing their homes.

Speaker 2: 24:43

First of all, thank you for you know, continuing to bring us back home to the human toll, because I think it is easy sometimes with big numbers or if you've never been to a place, to forget that people are human beings everywhere. They love their families everywhere. So thank you for that. And we talked about sort of the impact of loopholes around straw purchases, for example, on people to get these guns and then traffic them and then have this violence. And if someone might be listening and say, well, I don't want there to be more gun laws, why won't? That's Mexico's problem? Why won't Mexico just deal with it? Why won't Jamaica just deal with it? Why won't Haiti just deal with it? What would you say to someone who Reacts, thinking like well, that's that their government needs to deal with that. What does that have to do with Our laws? Like, I have the second amendment right and I don't want you coming for me that that's their government's fault. Basically, yeah.

Speaker 3: 25:38

So I mean, first of all, a lot of this doesn't necessarily doesn't need to be new laws, it's enforcing certain laws on the books, but to like a lot of things, you need like public pressure and priorities in terms of enforcing stuff. So I mean, now they've got it, you know, in 2022 by parts and safer communities act. They've bought in some very good things there about increasing penalties for straw buyers, about federal firearms trafficking, but you need to enforce this. So you see these ATF agents who are in Phoenix and they say, well, there's, there's 20 of us and there's Tens of thousands of firearms being smuggled and there's this, there's all the. We simply can't do this.

Speaker 3: 26:18

So what are you giving priorities to? Fighting to try to combat and try and go for people, arrest people. You have to have something to have public pressure to try and go after this and in terms of you know, so again. Second, second amendment, most a lot of. There was one guy I profile in the book and I've met again this year, who was a confidential informant for the ATF, who was a gun seller selling AR-15s, and he realized he was selling them in Arizona, in Tucson, and he was like this is huge amount of cartel trafficking happening? Yeah, I don't want to do this.

Speaker 3: 26:50

I don't want to sell AR-15s to Mexican cartels who are killing people in Mexico. I've got, I don't want to do that. And he tried to come in. He became very disillusioned by what happened and he's still very, very disillusioned by the federal government in that case. And we can look at some very bad cases which some people who would look at. So what about fast and furious? Which is a case in which the federal government watched 2000 firearms be trafficked to cartels in Mexico, including to El Chapo, including to El Chapo organization directly. In fact, guns that were in El Chapo's house when he was arrested with their and and add suspicion went at the court case they said well, you can't talk about fast and furious during El Chapo's trial. We've kind of adds to this. So I could understand totally and sympathize with those arguments. Okay, what's the federal government doing there? That was a messed up case. But again, this is good. It's not against American, laura Biden, gun owners. It's like you can try and stop these very harsh crimes. Now, if People are concerned about things like gangs, gang members, do you want Gang member who's in the house? Sorry, gang member who is in the United States without papers, being able to go in with no idea and buy a bunch of firearms. I mean, do you want that if you're on that side? But the second thing about like Absolutely look.

Speaker 3: 28:12

Mexico, haiti, these countries need to try and deal with this threat of organized crime. It's not up to America to do everything for these countries. They have to find ways in Mexico. People have to find here ways of dealing with organized crime. But it's much harder to do that when they're getting this steady amount of guns. So there's people here in Mexico who say, well, we've got to try and deal with organized crime. We know we would. This is a real threat. We've got to have some kind of effective law enforcement. We've got to try and protect our communities. But don't sell these people like all these firearms. Make some basic efforts to kind of reduce that number and then we can start.

Speaker 3: 28:51

Now you've seen situations where there was a first attempt to arrest a criminal on Charges of smuggling drugs, including fentanyl You've made it be one of the biggest fentanyl produced in Mexico and the first attempt to arrest him where they originally sent in a hundred Police and soldiers to arrest him and got him and a bunch of his gunmen rose up. Then they increased the number to 350 and he very quickly has 700 to 800 gunmen fighting them and these are guys. And these are guys firing 50 cows, one of which blew a soldier's leg off, firing these guys from the United States. So you know, it's just to say, well, we're trying to arrest the biggest fentanyl producer in Mexico, but he's got an army of guys with guns in the United States defending him and a lot of people losing their lives. So the veg that they released him. They went and recaptured him this January with three and a half thousand soldiers, but a lot of Mexican soldiers lost their lives in that operation. So so Mexican soldiers are dying attempting to try and stop fentanyl arriving in the United States. So it's like there's got to be some kind of mutual thing.

Speaker 3: 29:55

One of the fascinating things about organized crimes we do live in an interconnected world. You do have drugs from different countries. Now, specifically about the case of Mexico and, I would say overall, some of the ideas that America can kind of police the world. I can understand why there's kind of disillusionment with that and a lot that doesn't really work. It's hard for America to try and fix the problems of some, a lot of faraway countries. But with the specific case of Mexico, this is right on the US doorstep and it's in the United States self-interest to have a more stable Mexico. You know you saw a case of Americans crossing the border and being kidnapped and killed by cartels. You've seen literal kind of gunfights over the border. You see refugees coming. So it's actually a mutual interest to have, at least within this neighborhood, a stable neighborhood, whatever you could do for like faraway countries around the world.

Speaker 1: 30:51

I just the implications that are just so far reaching, like just one one domino falls in it and it all kind of goes from there too. I'm really curious. The part of the book that I found the most compelling actually was kind of as you mentioned at the beginning of your response the folks who worked either as manufacturers or with the industry themselves, how they tried to separate themselves both legally very firmly but then also kind of Cognitively, from the effects that their gun cells were having, whether it was someone who was selling things, who you know at a gun shop, who kind of there's a guy coming in every weekend to buy 15 guns at a time and he's not asking questions to kind of these big manufacturers or these big sellers. And I'm wondering if there was anything there that particularly shocked you when you went down that avenue in in your interviews.

Speaker 3: 31:36

Yeah, I think it's very interesting with the issue of firearms and these objects, and so I traced there's some firearms from a murder scene in mexico right back to a factory in romania, the cougir factory in fund. Was she making the guns and do they? How are they free about these guns? That they're using the ak-47s that are used in complex? Well, where's this? This war? It happens, and I'm just making this firearm.

Speaker 3: 31:57

And then I interviewed a guy in bulgaria who was a broke up and he was, you know, very excited by working in this industry. He was flying around I'm, africa and the middle east and sending them huge amounts of firearms. And I said are you concerned if your guns end up with the islamic state? Do you sell them to Saudi Arabia? They end up being the islamic state, you're concerned about that? And he said oh no, I'm okay, I'm protected because my sales were approved by the Bulgarian Government, which is approved by the European Community, so I'm not concerned about that. And I said it Well, are you? You're not concerned Legally, but are you concerned morally? And he thought for one. He said no. So it was like this. I think that's very true. People are well kind of separate, you know, and as often you can get that. And that, I think, comes in some ways to part of the substance of the lawsuit by the Mexican government on on the us Gun companies. It's like the idea of responsibility you need to take some responsibilities. Well, it's not our responsibility, we're selling firearms and so well, should you have some responsibility for this. And then are you deliberately marketing these guns with images that you're kind of deliberately Be selling them, though, deliberately having in one case they had a firearm with an image of Sapa, mexican freedom fighter, and then that was used, actually, in the murder of a Mexican journalist. So there was a very sadly ironic that you can have a gun With an image of a Mexican freedom fighter used to clamp down on Mexico's freedom of speech, but then it's mixed.

Speaker 3: 33:29

So, say, you get places like this, people like this guy, mike Detty, who was a confidential informant who works at gun seller but was very conscientious and didn't like this idea of guns being sold. I'm like, say, many gun shop owners and many people like everyone's human beings, and if you really talk about this, most of them are not Evil. But it's like, how can you simply make a system and it's not asking for that much in this case. Now some people are pretty cynical and they're like, if we've got like now and one of the worst things is the percentages are probably not even that big have gun sellers and they'll sell Well in AK47 and their markups like a hundred dollars, 100 guns selling at the base level is not a massively profitable industry because there's so much competition. You have a lot of people who are like vets, on on on military pensions, so we're just gonna make a bit of money by selling guns for a hundred bucks. You're gonna sell a gun, you know, a thousand bucks for 10 guns to a cartel who can carry out mass murder and kill a killer woman's 18 year old son who's a philosophy student, just because an act gun was sold by you. You really want that when you're conscious. You know the total sales to Mexico. Even if it is 200,000 firearms a year going to Mexico, in terms of the total sales it's not that big. In terms of the entire industry 200,000 foreign, we've got different companies Is it worth it for that amount of guns going to some of the most violent criminal organizations on the planet? So I think there's many things that you can. They should be able to find a meat away with this. It should be a battle we can win and I think there are people in the industry Now.

Speaker 3: 34:57

A lot of them are very closed in the industry. They don't want to talk. It's very hard to reach out to these, to reach out to these companies and make a kind of closed door thing, but you'd hope that some midway could be found. Now when we get to the NRA specifically, they very much built this idea of no compromise. So now I think that idea is based on two things. One is the idea of we don't want any kind of slippery slope and this was said. The idea of you're eating a packet of crisps, a packet of potato chips. You can't stop, you have one. I was nice, I said I'm not.

Speaker 3: 35:32

That was used by the NRA as an example, by one of the guys who really specialized in organization. But also this idea of selling this kind of conflict, and the NRA, as well as a very effective lobbying group, have been this idea of selling a lifestyle. So the crusade is important to them, but really for the interests. Again, the interests are a lot of gun owners. It's like do you want to arm cartels, do you want to arm really violent gangs and can you come to a halfway universal background checks, simply such as to stop them having this loophole doing that that easily? Things to try and come down on straw buyers the idea, for example, of multiple sales being alerted to the ATF in border states is now there. Can you extend that back to more states? So quite small things. You could think of being gun owners interests without getting to the real bigger pictures, which is some of the things that you debate there without getting to the bigger pictures of assault rifles or AR-15s and stuff. You don't even need to get there to make a huge impact on this.

Speaker 2: 36:32

And I feel like, unless someone lives deep, deep, deep under a rock in the United States, there's so much talk and rhetoric about Mexico and the border and the border. We all feel like we have opinions on it one way or another. I've never even been to Mexico, so there's a lot of stuff in the book that was surprising to me. But I'm wondering whether things in your research that were surprising to you even living there, or that you think would surprise people, given all the narratives that we hear.

Speaker 3: 37:00

So I've been living in Mexico for 23 years. I came here from the UK 23 years ago and it's a country I love very much and I've spent most of my adult life here. One of the things I say about this in terms of the gun violence and the violence here is look, a lot of the news, it's hard to get a nuanced perspective of this. So one of the things that surprises people is that we're actually in Mexico City. They've actually done a lot of work to try and reduce the violence here in Mexico City, and Mexico City has now a lower murder rate than many US cities per capita Now, not only lower than some of the most violent US cities like Baltimore or New Orleans, also lower than some of the mid-level US cities like Houston and Dallas, and even now, more recently, lower than a place Portland Oregon which had an increase in gun violence. So that's, I think, something which often people will find surprising and this nuance.

Speaker 3: 37:57

Often people will ask about Mexico. How about can I go to Cancun, to the resort? Now, many, many people visit Mexico at a time and have great times, and there's certain places in Mexico you can go to, like Mexico City, like to the tourist resorts. There are other places that are really, really violent. So that's one of the things, I think, which is kind of surprising. I think probably as well, like a sense that Mexico as well is not a really backward country. There was something recently a Republican politician said are they eating cat food out of tins? Or something he said cat food out of cans If it wasn't for us it was kind of.

Speaker 3: 38:39

And one about Mexico is a complex country, so it's a country with over a trillion dollar economy. It's a country with over a quarter of young people now going to higher education, with people, with doctors and so on. Some big, highly educated Mexico has been in many places where you have the guys in ski masks, in AK-47s, have been to the village of El Chapo in the mountains and been through an evangelical ceremony with his mother and sat there. We have the armed men coming in To tell you another story about the kind of extreme side of this and one of the kind of very concerning and why I think about the conflict as well is when you see the recruitment of children, particularly young boys, into the cartels and there are a lot of women in there as well, but a lot of young boys, particularly used for cannon fodder, and there was one.

Speaker 3: 39:28

I mean, I've been here 23 years and some of the crazy thing now is you see kids who were not even born when I first started carving this, who are now the hitmen and they're very young and I've been to some of these youth prisons and talked to young 13, 14, 15 year olds who have committed multiple murders and this kind of crazy thousand yards. Stare, they can have. But also there's so much victims and victimizers. Because that age you're recruited by the ins and ins of the cartel and what you have? There's one story of a kid who was known as Juan Pistolas and it was one pistol translation and he began this kind of bit of an endless photos of him carrying the. Seattle. Join the cartel now and there's a 40% chance you can be dead within 10 years, but they still do it. So, how you know, there's nothing offered better, better parts in life than one that leads to death.

Speaker 1: 41:45

Sort of in and that kind of awful, that sort of feeling of like awful inevitability that I could see be present. I'm gonna ask another sort of devil's advocate question on our end, which is, you know if, if the US were to make these reforms and kind of stem the tide of you know, or like kind of damn, to continue using that the iron river analogy, but like to kind of dam up the amount of firearms flowing into Into Mexico, do you think that that would have a quick impact? Or do you think you know that that would have an immediate positive impact on the violence that is happening within cart with cartels? Or do you think that there would be another source that would open up for for firearms?

Speaker 3: 42:23

Yeah, sure. So you know, first, this has to be something which is seen a little bit long-term or medium term we live. I think one of the problems of today's age that we live in is we're so Such stuff is such short-term. I mean, we're all kind of hooked on Social media, which is like today's news this person said this and then they said that in return, and we find it very so. We don't solve these kind of big problems, which is this has been building up for two decades or for more than that. So I think anything we have to think of a certain time here.

Speaker 3: 42:55

But, like you know, the other thing is to think about, I think like Pragmatic solutions to this. So people say, oh, you're never gonna stop them getting guns, so it's like we can't do anything, just give them guns, rather than saying, okay, we've got to reduce the amount of firearms they get and make fire more expensive One of the problems as well with the abundance of firearms which currently they get. And then it is right now there's just not the basic efforts being made to stop this. So when you have this abundance of firearms, so it's a question of reducing it, now people say, well, okay, well, they're gonna get guns from Russia or China, but they're much further away. So you know, still like if you know Russia providing China running guns, it's more of a challenge. You can try and you can try and they gotta you know like they've got a big amount on boats and so forth. Now one big issue legitimately brought up by people hitting back about this is you have corruption the Mexican security forces and you have firearms being sold through corrupt people the Mexican security forces. Now it does happen and you go down through Latin America and you see this. You see what appears to be about a couple of thousand firearms a year going missing from the Mexican security forces, compared to a couple of hundred thousand firearms a year come from the United States. If the Mexican soldiers were selling all their guns to cartels, they wouldn't have guns themselves. They wouldn't be somewhere where your guns was some of the guys else, so it's pretty small percentage.

Speaker 3: 44:19

Now to get back to it About how long term is this? I mean, I think we've got to think 10 years, 20 years and again, those things are. They're not that long away. That's 10 years goes quickly. I published my first book in 2011 and I said 12 years ago and when I published that and I kind of naively thought then, are these Come? This is crazy and people are gonna realize this kind of whole issue of of cartels and drugs and murders it's gonna stop. And I was like, well, you know, talking to people saying, well, we come back in 10 years time and this will be like this violence, be a thing of the past. And 12 years later it's kind of worse. So 10 years go fast.

Speaker 3: 44:53

But you got to think about generations, about you know how this happens, how it happens to our children, how I have happened to growing up in these situations, to try and about solutions. But you have to have a Mexican government and police forces getting on top of the situation. And again, I mean, you keep on. If you turn that, if you really put a dam on the Iron River so no more guns were coming, they've still got a bunch of guns right now, but if they want to get new guns, they gradually, gradually become a degraded and weak. As people get arrested and guns get seized, they gradually kind of lose strength. If you could turn it right down, you gradually said, you know, but there's at least a lot of other things done as well. They have to have prevention programs, they have to have better security forces or better police forces admitting justice. But you know what's the alternative to do nothing and to see this number of people dying on both sides of the border.

Speaker 1: 45:42

Well, and even to that, if I mean, I'm presuming if you're a listener to this podcast and you've stuck around this long, you care about people, so I feel like we don't have to fight for the case of you should care about a Mexican citizen as much as an American one. So I'm just gonna leapfrog over that. But your book also, even though details, if there's someone who really is a firm America only person they're like, and a lot of times because of that intersection of drugs and guns and the back and Forselling, like a gun may be trafficked from the US and into Mexico and then back up again.

Speaker 3: 46:13

Well, yeah, I think one case which which a lot of Americans were very concerned about, a lot of people the conservative side were very concerned about, was this gun which was trafficked to a car that a Mexican came back and was used in the murder of Brian Terry, who was from the Bortak elites kind of border patrol elite force and Killed. Now, in that case that was one which had been watched by the ATF under Fast and Furious. So so, yeah, I mean so you had this operation where they watched two thousand guns go to cartels. One of the theories was like here in Mexico is like oh, these guns go to the scene a lot of car. So so this is obviously showing that the Mexican government and the US government are working to see a lot of car. Tell, now, there are legitimate things there, but I don't think what that was in this case. But anyway, the second thing was here in Mexico people were like America obviously wants Mexico to be violent, but they said they deliberately setting guns to cartels and in the United States by some of the hard line people was by the NRA themselves like this was deliberately Plot to make the American gun industry look bad, to try and take away assault rifles and this is all by the Obama administration. That was kind of the idea.

Speaker 3: 47:23

Now I think all of those are mistaken looking at this and that really it was First a completely bot operation. But it shows two things. One, the huge amounts of guns that are going down, but also how these kind of federal operations play out and kind of these are these idea of making these kind of big conspiracy cases, which they failed on very, very badly. And One of the sad things about it was that was in 2011. It kind of put this issue of trafficking guns to Mexico off the agenda for a decade, and it was in 2021 when the Mexican government Filed this lawsuit about gun companies. That has been put back on the agenda and it's now on the agenda in a big way. So now's an opportunity to kind of really get to this.

Speaker 3: 48:07

The other thing is, I think, to really much, very much, alive this with the issues, and you know it's very good that you're looking into this issue. I like this with the issues in the United States. The issues of gun victims or victims of gun violence in the United States and victims and violence in Mexico or anywhere is completely linked and You've got, you know children dying from gun violence in the United States. You know You've got all of these things happening there so very much and there was, you know, having efforts of this of unifying and groups in Mexico kind of supporting these kind of rights much for our lives and these kind of things well, this has been great and I feel like we have we could talk for hours an hour.

Speaker 1: 48:47

This has been our dream since 2021, so we've had time.

Speaker 3: 48:50

This is the problem, yeah well, I guess the last word, you know it's always try to get. It's always good to try and have a positive note and and that can be difficult when you see this kind of level of of death. And again, I mean these Stories I've mentioned there are thousands of them about. You know people who suffered here amid the violence. It is, and I think it will be looked back on as a historic case of gun trafficking to a very violent situation I would say a hybrid armed conflict in Mexico. We'll look back on this the millions of guns being trafficked to a very, very horrific armed conflict, hybrid armed conflict in Mexico and, at the same time, as like, very sad stories of many, many Americans dying from gun violence but also dying from drug overdose in the United States and a very, very legitimate concerns about that.

Speaker 3: 49:47

But these are things which are not impossible. These are not impossible things to fix. This is, you know. You know Humans have sent people to the moon. You know how easy is it, how difficult is it to stop. The most violent organizations on the planet have so many firearms from these companies and I think we are at a moment now, a very crucial moment in this, where there is Chances of things changing and there is hope, so. So I hope you know like from these Conversations, from this moment, they won't be. Look back is just a missed opportunity. But you know the beginning of change and again in 10, 20 years time looking back on this. So well, things start to change and now there's no longer 35,000 you know murders, relatives, every year in Mexico. But it's a thing of the past.

Speaker 1: 50:39

I appreciate that, ending on a hopeful note, and thank you for all of your work because I know as part of our work, kelly and I talked to victims and survivors almost every day and vicarious trauma is real and it's a hard thing. So I appreciate your work so much. And and where can folks find you and your books and in your current writing?

Speaker 3: 50:58

Yeah, sure, so you can find my books on on Amazon or wherever you buy your books blood, gun money, how America arms gangs and cartels. I have a free newsletter you can subscribe to you for free, which you can find at wwwcrashoutmediacom.

Speaker 1: 51:18

Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, hey, want to share with the podcast. Listeners can now get in touch with us here at red, blue and Brady via phone or text message. Simply call or text us at 480744 3452 with your thoughts. Questions concerns ideas, cat pictures, whatever thanks for listening.

Speaker 2: 51:40

As always, brady's life-saving work in Congress, the courts and communities across the country is made possible. Thanks to you. For more information on Brady or how to get involved in the fight against gun violence, please like and subscribe to the podcast. Get in touch with us at Brady United or on social at Brady buzz. Be brave and remember. Take action, not sites. You, you.