Thread: TX: News 8 Investigates Texas is arming Mexican drug cartels

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Texas is arming Mexican drug cartels

12:51 PM CDT on Saturday, March 14, 2009

By BYRON HARRIS / WFAA-TV

News 8 Investigates
March 13th, 2009
Byron Harris reports, with video

The Mexican drug wars killed 6,000 people last year. In many cases, the weapons used to perpetrate that bloody violence are coming from Dallas.

The FN Five-Seven is an assault weapon you can hold in your hand. It's made by Fabrique Nacional in Belgium and equipped with a magazine that holds 20 rounds.

Its bullets can tear through a protective vest.

"This is known as a 'cop killer' down in Mexico," said James Ruffin, a special agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. "It's one of the weapons of choice for the drug cartel and the Zetas."

The FN Five-Seven is the perfect weapon for Mexican drug cartels to use against each other or the Mexican police. What makes this weapon so deadly is not just the gun, but the ammunition it fires. It's very light and it exits the barrel at a very high velocity.

The projectile tumbles when it hits the target, ripping a large hole in the victim, much like the M-16 rifle used by American troops in combat.

"These cartels are digging their heels in and are fighting back — and are fighting back with the type of firepower that we see in wartime conflicts," said Drug Enforcement Admnistration agent James Capra.

Cartels depend on the United States for firepower, since guns can be easily purchased here. In Mexico, weapons are very tightly controlled.

Texas supplies more guns to Mexico than any other state. In 2007, more than 1,100 weapons originally sold in Texas were confiscated in Mexico, more than all other U.S. states combined.

The FN Five-Seven costs $800 to $850 at gun shops, flea markets or gun shows in Texas. But it can bring $2,600 in Mexico, where gun sales are illegal, making the FN Five-Seven attractive for smugglers.

"They have four or five people that buy these firearms legitimately," Ruffin explained. "And then these five people don't know each other, but they have a common source that's providing them the money ... and then they will bring those firearms to this one person, who then trafficks them down to Mexico."

Gun shops in Texas must run background checks on all buyers. If a buyer has no criinal record, the sale goes through. Buyers at gun shows and flea markets aren't checked at all.

Since cargo entering Mexico is rarely checked by Mexican customs, the weapons aren't discovered until they're recovered at crime scenes across the border. And there are plenty of those.

More than 900 people were murdered in Juarez — across the border from El Paso — last year.

The source of the violence is drugs. The source of the firepower is Texas.

E-mail bharris@wfaa.com

Build the wall - higher!!!

Maybe Mexico needs to put more troops on the border to protect themselves from America. Makes me laugh thinking about how tough Mexico is with their gun laws, especially when everyone in Mexico has a gun. Apparently all laws in Mexico are made to be broken.

Oh, by the way The Five-seveN is available from FN for government or law enforcement sales only. So apparently you and I can't just walk into the Dallas gun store and purchase this weapon as these pistols are rare and thus almost impossible to acquire except from legitimate, FFL dealers.

Talk about fear mongering, this cop killer myth has already been exposed. Numbers indicate that the common 9x19mm (NATO 9mm Luger) is a considerably more powerful cartridge than the 5.7x28mm when fired from pistol length barrels. So the typical 9mm will do more damage to a cop than the Five-seveN. Also for this weapon to be capable of penetrating a kevlar vest it would need to use armor piercing ammo are also restricted to law enforcement and the military. Of course our drug cartels are surely capable of purchasing anything they want.