Note the blatant propaganda in the article about drug gangs buying “automatic weapons” in the USA. If they were stupid enough to buy a Class III weapon, the serial number could be traced immediately back to the buyer. Balderdash.
Nationwide, the number of killings attributed to organized crime doubled in 2008 to more than 5,000, and no city has been harder hit than Juarez. The murder rate here is five times higher than in 2007, but Garcia says all types of crimes are skyrocketing.
“The criminals got into the schools and robbed all the teachers,” he says. “Told the teachers that they were going to come back for the Christmas bonuses of the teachers. If they don’t do it, they’re going to take hostages of the children and kill the children and kill them. So these teachers didn’t come back to school. Their schools are closed.”
Two of the nation’s most powerful criminal groups, the Juarez and the Sinaloa cartels, are fighting for control of Juarez. Both groups move billions of dollars worth of drugs into the U.S. each year, and their hit men carry high-powered assault rifles, machine guns and even grenades.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98135986
It really is bad and getting worse. They are getting these weapons from somewhere and obviously, not legally.
Weapons ILLEGALY bought here by Mexicans and Mexican-Americans and then ILLEGALY smuggled into Mexico.
Assuming they don't deface/destroy it.
But why buy an expensive Class III weapon in the US, when you can get a select fire AK-47 on the world market for $100-150. They could also get US Made weapons, captured by various groups, from friendlies we provided them to, or Chinese clones of the same. (China makes/made an M-16 "clone" but never used it themselves, I put "clone" in quotes because there are minor differences, some of which are improvements over the old M-16 models they were cloned from) We also provided M-16s to the Palestinians, which have been showing up in various Not Good hands.
The LAST place anyone would want to buy fully automatic weapon is on the US retail market. A quick Google showed an AK for about $1,500, an M-16 Carbine for $17,000. Yea, them druggies are just itching to spend 10-20X what they could spend elsewhere.