Figures from last week's Star Tribune series about Minnesota-to-Mexico gun smuggling were jaw-dropping: An estimated 2,000 firearms cross the border illegally from the United States into Mexico every day. Gunrunners can make $500 to $1,000 per gun by selling them to Mexican drug thugs. And though the U.S. government has provided $1.6 billion in aid to Mexico to help shore up the borders, that's a pittance against the $30 billion drug trade.
But the most stunning statistic of all is 23,000 -- the number of Mexican murders directly linked to the drug trade since 2006. That killing was done with firearms from the United States, including Minnesota.
All that death underscores the urgent need to get at the core of the problem -- America's insatiable demand for illegal drugs.
In a chilling four-part series, Star Tribune reporter Jim Walsh comprehensively documented what authorities call the "iron pipeline" through the story of a Minnesota gunrunner who got caught.
To his Medford, Minn., neighbors and friends, Paul Giovanni de la Rosa was a father of four and a soccer dad who was sometimes "away on business." Turns out that business was buying guns legally in Owatonna and Albert Lea, then smuggling them across the border to sell to drug cartels.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) says that 90 percent of the guns recovered at Mexican drug-related crime scenes and successfully traced are from the United States.
ATF agents caught up with de la Rosa late last year after following his gun-buying patterns between 2007 and 2009. He was arrested at a Texas border town in November, driving a minivan that had 14 guns and 200 rounds of ammunition hidden in a piece of furniture.
Some might suggest that the pipeline could be closed by adopting tougher gun laws. But in this case the current system worked because federal law requires gun sellers to record who buys weapons and how many. One improvement would be to share that cross-jurisdictional information faster. One of the weapons de la Rosa bought in 2007 was recovered two months later at a Mexican crime scene, but he was not arrested until more than a year later.
