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A sign near the U.S. border in San Diego warns that it is illegal to import firearms from the United States.

This article was originally published by the The Texas Observera non-profit investigative magazine and media outlet. Subscribe to their weekly newsletteror follow them on Facebook And X.

In 2023, guns were used in 1,799 homicides in Texas, a devastating human toll. Yet guns purchased in Texas likely contribute to even more deadly violence south of the border, empowering fentanyl traffickers and driving more migrants into the United States.

Of the guns used in crimes recovered in Mexico between 2017 and 2021 (among cases in which gun traces identified a country or U.S. state of origin), more than one in four (29%) came from Texas, according to new data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

More than 22,000 gun homicides occur in Mexico each year. Given that 29% of guns used in crimes come from Texas, that means 5,500 murders in Mexico likely involved guns that originated in Texas. That’s three to four times the number of gun homicides reported each year in the Lone Star State. (Texas had 1,799 gun homicides last year, compared to 1,339 in 2019.)

In May 2024, more than three years after I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request, the ATF released data on firearms recovered in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras and traced to purchases in the United States over an eight-year period. The new data shows that 52,541 firearms recovered in Mexico between 2015 and 2022 were traced to a purchase in the United States. The new data reinforces the importance of Texas in the illicit gun network: of these, more than 40% came from Texas.

An earlier leak of gun-tracing data also shows that some Texas gun traffickers are behind a large number of crime guns recovered in Mexico. According to data on guns traced from Mexico to the United States in 2019-2020, Primary Arms in Houston sold more than 40 rifles (most of them Anderson AM-15s) recovered from crime scenes in 2019-2020 alone.

More than half of the guns traced to Texas from Mexico came from a dozen cities: Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas, El Paso, McAllen, Laredo, Brownsville, Pharr, Corpus Christi and Grande Prairie.

Licensed gun dealers in just six Texas border city zip codes were responsible for nearly three thousand guns trafficked into Mexico, recovered, and traced back to a purchase. Gun dealers in McAllen were responsible for more than a thousand crime guns recovered in Mexico between 2015 and 2022; most of the border city’s 18 gun dealers are pawn shops, but there’s also an Academy Sports — and Dynamic Tactical Solutions. Dynamic Tactical Solutions, on its website, claims that the Second Amendment is “the only thing standing between freedom and tyranny” and that it aims to “normalize gun culture.”

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John Linday-Poland

Map of firearms trafficked and recovered in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras from 2015 to 2022, and whose origins can be traced back to a purchase in the United States. An interactive version of this map can be viewed online.

Academy Sports + Outdoors, a Katy-based sporting goods chain, has been identified as the source of numerous gun trafficking operations, according to data released on the origins of Mexican guns. The leaked data on guns recovered in Mexico in 2019-20 and traced to the United States includes 349 firearms purchased at Academy Sports locations, primarily in Texas. A single Academy Sports store in El Paso, located three blocks from the border with Mexico, was the source of 33 firearms recovered in 2019-20, including nine rifles in the span of just over a year, according to the leaked data.

In Uvalde, an 18-year-old purchased two rifles from Oasis Outback in 2022 and, less than a week later, murdered 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School using the rifles. Uvalde County was also the source of more than 30 firearms recovered in Mexico between 2015 and 2022, according to ATF data.

According to the leaked data, Zeroed in Armory in Pearland sold eleven Barrett .50-caliber rifles that were shipped to Mexico and recovered in 2020. Barrett .50-caliber rifles fire large bullets accurately over a mile and have even taken down a Mexican police helicopter. About 60 Barrett .50-caliber rifles recovered in Mexico were traced to a purchase in Texas between 2019 and 2020, the data shows.

Guns purchased in Texas and shipped to Mexico are widespread. Data shows that guns were purchased in 212 Texas counties before being shipped to Mexico and recovered as weapons used in crimes between 2015 and 2022, for a total of nearly 22,000 firearms.

Yet the number of firearms recovered in Mexico represents only a small fraction of the total number of weapons actually brought into the country, as shown by estimates of all types of smuggling. The most rigorous study of firearms trafficking from the United States to Mexico, a multinational research project called “The Way of the Gun” published by the University of San Diego and the IGARAPÉ Institute in 2013, estimates that 253,000 firearms are purchased each year in the United States with the intention of selling them to Mexico.

Mexico itself already restricts legal access to firearms. The Mexican firearms industry is very small, and the weapons produced in Mexico represent only a tiny fraction of the weapons recovered in the country.

We all have a stake in stopping the cross-border trafficking of firearms. With new data on the origins of guns used in violence in Mexico and elsewhere in local communities in Texas and beyond, community leaders, elected officials, and gun traffickers have an opportunity to take action to reduce the illicit firearms trade that empowers fentanyl producers and accelerates forced displacement and migration.

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