U.S., Mexico seek to stem illegal guns

Faced with spiraling drug violence along the border, senior U.S. officials met with their Mexican counterparts Wednesday and announced steps to stem the flow of illegal weapons into Mexico.

Officials said that many of the weapons — including powerful handguns and semiautomatic assault rifles — are purchased legally at shops and gun shows, many in Texas. The guns are typically carried south over the porous border by multiple couriers that some officials referred to as an "army of ants."

The weapons are typically purchased for drug traffickers by other people — including friends, relatives and, increasingly, women — legally entitled to own a gun in Texas. The transaction is known as a "straw purchase," the officials said.

Even military-style weapons such as .50-caliber machine guns, bazookas and grenades have been seized in raids.

The increasingly sophisticated and powerful weapons pose a risk on both sides of the border, officials said, but especially in Mexico, where at least 105 people were killed in drug-related violence during the first 15 days of the year.

Project Gunrunner

After meeting with his Mexican counterpart, Eduardo Medina Mora, and President Felipe Calderón in Mexico City, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said the goal of what was dubbed Project Gunrunner is to dry up the cartels' arms supply in the United States by punishing gun dealers who knowingly sell weapons to so-called "straw" buyers who then re-sell them illegally.

"I certainly foresee a tightening up of the way gun dealers distribute guns if, in fact, they are selling to straw purchasers," Mukasey said. The new measures will also give Mexican law-enforcement officials greater access to the eTrace computer database in the United States, which will enable them to use the serial numbers to trace weapons used in crimes in Mexico to U.S. gun dealers.

Under Project Gunrunner, ATF is adding 35 special agents along the border and 15 investigators at the multiagency El Paso Intelligence Center. The center, known as EPIC, will serve as a clearinghouse for ATF operations and gather intelligence on the cartels responsible for the violence.

"The weapons we're seeing now is stuff normally used for war," said one ATF official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Some of the weapons "can take out an airplane," the official said.

Popular weapon

One of the most popular weapons is the FN 57, a Belgian-made handgun known in Mexico as policias, or "cop killers" because the bullets can penetrate body armor, the official said.

In Mexico City, Medina Mora acknowledged the spike in drug violence and compared it to the spate of executions and beheadings that peaked in March and April of last year. He called cartel hit men "cowards" for killing the family members of police officers, including the wife and 12-year-old daughter of an officer killed Tuesday in Tijuana.

Calderón's campaign has involved the deployment of hundreds of troops and federal agents to trouble spots in several states and has especially targeted the Gulf cartel, based along the Texas border, authorities say.

"The campaign has instilled fear in narcos who felt they owned the region," the U.S. official said. "Now they're nervous, looking both ways, hiding, and that is very positive because any disruption hurts their business. But we're looking at a protracted war here. There is no light at the end of the tunnel yet."

Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan has said that as many as 2,000 weapons enter Mexico from the U.S. each day, most through Texas and Arizona. The weapons are key in the drug-related bloodshed, which last year killed more than 2,500 people, a record.

The Bush administration will lobby Congress to support the so-called Merida Initiative, a program of U.S. anti-drug assistance that would give Mexico $500 million worth of equipment and training this year as part of a three-year, $1.4 billion package.

Mukasey said the administration has a strong argument, given Calderon's unprecedented cooperation with the U.S. in the drug fight since he took office one year ago.