The only place to buy guns in Mexico is located in a heavily guarded Mexico City military compound which issues fewer than 50 permits a year. But that hasn’t stopped the build up of more than two million firearms that have arrived in the country in the last decade.

While the US is worried about migrants and drugs being smuggled across the border, there’s also a big problem of what’s being exported in the other direction.

The US is the largest supplier of guns to the country’s criminal gangs, according to a recent federal appeal launched by the government of Mexico against some of the top gun manufacturers in the US.

The original lawsuit alleged negligence in the sale of the weapons that end up in the hands of Mexican cartels and result in the deaths of tens of thousands of Mexican every year.

This issue gained renewed urgency after one of the high-caliber pistols used in the deadly kidnapping of four Americans — abducted by drug traffickers in a Mexican border city last month — was found to have been purchased in the US for use by members of the Gulf Cartel, according to another recent federal lawsuit filed in US District Court in Brownsville, Texas.

The serial number of a Diamondback AR-15 purchased in the US matched that of a gun, recovered by authorities, linked to the March 3 homicides of Shaheed Woodard and Zindell Brown, the Brownsville complaint says.

The Americans were killed in the border city of Matamoros while they were on their way to a clinic with two others, who were eventually let go by cartel kidnappers. A Mexican bystander was also killed.

A secretive faction of the Gulf Cartel apologized for the deadly kidnapping, and turned over five of its members to Mexican authorities last month.

According to a federal complaint, Roberto Lugardo Moreno was charged with conspiring to illegally export a firearm. He allegedly admitted to buying guns for a group he knew had plans to provide them to the Gulf Cartel, the complaint said. He is scheduled to be arraigned in Brownsville on April 13, according to federal court documents.

“What often occurs is that cartel cell groups in the United States will recruit US citizens to purchase weapons for them,” said Robert Almonte, a security consultant and former El Paso cop. “These people can be criminals that the cartel are already working with, or members of street and biker gangs. Very often the weapons are smuggled across the border into Mexico in passenger vehicles.”

Almonte also said that the cartels will often trade drugs for guns with their accomplices in the US.

More than 23,000 people were killed in gun violence in Mexico in 2019, Mexico’s civil lawsuit against the US gunmakers says. The US companies named in the suit include Smith & Wesson Brands and Barrett Firearms, which manufactures the M82 semi automatic rifle — said to be a favorite of Mexico’s drug cartels.

“The unlawful trafficking of guns to criminal groups in Mexico has taken a staggering toll on Mexican lives, property and the societal fabric of the country,” says the lawsuit. “It has fueled increased violence and homicides in Mexico, claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, displaced tens of thousands of residents and cost the Mexican government hundreds of billions of dollars in police and military expenditures, lost employment and wages, and lost tax revenue.”

Mexico’s initial complaint against seven US-based gun manufacturers and one wholesaler and distributor was dismissed by the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts in September, but the country filed the appeal — bolstered by briefs from victims of gun violence — last month.

Between 2009 and 2019, more than two million firearms were trafficked from the US to Mexico, court papers say.

Last year, a former US Marine living in Whittier, Calif., plead guilty to federal charges that he led a six-man scheme to smuggle weapons and ammunition to the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación, one of the largest and most violent cartels in Mexico.

Marco Antonio Santillan Valencia was charged in a 23-count federal indictment with conspiring to violate federal export laws by illegally bringing the weapons and ammunition to cartel operatives in Mexico. The case is ongoing.

As of March 19, 2023, there were 112,340 missing people in the country, according to the recently filed court papers in the suit. According to Paulina Vega Gonzalez, a Mexican human rights lawyer, the majority of those “disappeared” are victims of gun violence.

“Families of the disappeared have formed citizen-led ‘search collectives’ to investigate the disappearance, including by excavating mass graves,” court papers say. “Vega Gonzalez reports that searchers have found clandestine graves where human bodies with gunshot wounds were buried. In the state of Nuevo Leon a search recovered the remains of at least 17 bodies as well as thousands of human skeletal remains. All the skulls recovered were impacted by gunshots.”

In January, armed drug cartel members clashed with security forces in the Sinaloa Cartel’s stronghold in Culiacan during the arrest of Ovidio Guzman, the son of Joaquin “El Chapo Guzman, a convicted drug dealer and former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel who is currently serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado.

In the melee that engulfed the city, cartel members harassed and robbed Mexican reporters, including Marcos Vizcarra, a freelance reporter. He told authorities that he was harassed by teenagers wielding 9 mm pistols who stole his car, cell phone and computer, court papers say.

They told him to stop reporting on the cartels and “threatened to end his life if he did not comply,” court papers say.

The lawsuit also highlights the murder of two elderly Jesuit priests in Chihuahua state last year. Javier Campos and Joaquin Mora were killed inside their church, and the gunman who carried out the June 20 attack also took their bodies, reported the Catholic News Agency. 

According to the Chihuahua State Attorney General’s Office, both priests tried to protect a man who sought refuge in the church while being chased by another man, who was armed, according to reports. The victim was also shot dead along with the priests, news reports said.