Seven out of every ten homicides in the state of Jalisco are committed with a firearm.
Because gun ownership is strictly controlled in Mexico, virtually all of the weapons used in these heinous acts are unlicensed.
No one really knows exactly how many guns are floating around Jalisco, since most are bought and sold on the black market. Many also are smuggled across the U.S. border and quickly find their way into the hands of criminal gangs.
In the past, state and federal authorities have made periodic efforts to keep the numbers down by promoting voluntary gun exchanges – asking citizens to swap their weapons for toys, electrical items or even vouchers that can be cashed in at department stores.
According to figures released by the Mexican military, gun owners voluntarily turned in 3,769 weapons between 2008 and 2015 in Jalisco.
The other major method used to reduce the number of weapons in circulation is to set up militarized road blocks across the state. These have been regularly employed over the past few decades, although their effectiveness is unclear since the Ministry of Defense does not provide data on how many guns they stumble upon as a result of the random searches of vehicles.
The commander of the XV Military Zone in Jalisco, Enrique Méndez González, this week expressed his concern at growing evidence suggesting that weapons are being used more frequently in all kinds of crimes. Saying the situation is getting “out of control,” he urged all levels of government to reinstate canje de armas (weapons exchange) programs and puestos de revision (highway checks) as soon as possible.
The homicide rate over the past three years in Jalisco seems to support Méndez González’s case. In 2014, 904 murders were committed in this state. The figure rose to 1,017 in 2015 and 1,152 last year.
Legal, illegal weapons
Remarkably, there is only one gun store in Mexico where weapons can be purchased legally (compared to around 50,000 in the United States). This store is found in the basement of an anonymous building in Mexico City owned by the Ministry of Defense, and its location is never advertised. While under Mexico’s Constitution all citizens have the right to own a weapon for self defense, the paperwork required to purchase one legally is complicated and time-consuming. Most individuals rarely bother, since obtaining a gun on the black market is relatively easy. (Getting a permit to carry a concealed firearm is extremely hard.)
Unconfirmed data indicates that Mexico’s sole gun store sold a mere 52,147 weapons in a six-year period between 2009 and 2014.
The reluctance by the Defense Ministry to provide concrete data on gun ownership and registration numbers makes research into this issue complicated. According to several reports, there are around three million legally registered weapons in Mexico. The number of illegal guns ranges anywhere from 15 to 50 million, depending on which source you believe.
Either way, that’s a lot of heat.