Awash in Weapons, Mexico Has Just One Gun Shop Where You Can Legally Buy a Firearm Tim Johnson - McClatchyDC | |
go to original April 20, 2014 |
Mexico has exactly one gun shop where you can legally buy a firearm. It's on a military base in Mexico City. Army Col. Raul Manzano says they have 70-100 visitors a day. (Heriberto Rodriguez/MCT) |
MEXICO CITY — Mexico has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world. If any of the nation's 112 million citizens want to buy firearms, there's only one store where they can do it legally. It's on a sprawling military base and run by the army.
That, however, hasn't stopped Mexicans from acquiring firearms. The country is awash in illegal guns, many of them assault weapons in the hands of merciless criminal gangs. Many of them, Mexican officials assert, were purchased in the United States.
Nothing highlights the cultural and legal differences between Mexico and the United States as starkly as Mexico's lone gun shop, whose ponderous name is the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales.
In contrast, the four U.S. border states — California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas — have 20,834 firearms dealers licensed by the U.S. government, according to Marc Willis, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
... The shop's existence is unknown to many citizens.
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