More than half of "crime guns" recovered and traced in Central
America are sourced from the United States, according to U.S.
gun control agency ATF. This level nears 70% for Mexico and is
around 80% across the Caribbean.
"It's called the iron river and it's flooding countries to the
south," Elizabeth Burke of U.S. non-profit Global Action on Gun
Violence said at an event organized by the Center for American
Progress in Washington.
Burke called for rules preventing manufacturers from selling to
dealers with lax distribution practices. Manufacturers should
also stop selling armor-piercing weapons and guns that can
easily be modified to shoot hundreds of bullets at a time, she
said.
John Lindsay-Poland, an activist from Stop US Arms to Mexico,
added that lax license rules and enforcement helped facilitate
the cross-border flow of arms - including military-grade weapons
desired by cartels.
"Why would we be arming the very people that we say we are
fighting?" he said, calling for more controls at the start of
the supply chains.
Sixteen U.S. states and a handful of Caribbean governments last
month expressed support for Mexico's appeal in a civil lawsuit
against U.S. gun manufacturers, which seeks to hold them
responsible for facilitating the trafficking of deadly weapons.
U.S. gunmakers have maintained that they sell firearms legally
to Americans who pass a background check, and their lawyers have
argued that holding them responsible opens the door for other
lawsuits, such as the deaths of Russians killed by their weapons
in Ukraine.
U.S government figures show last year that income from legal
firearm shipments to Latin America increased 8%, with most sales
going to Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia.
The National Rifle Association and the State Department did not
immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
"We don't want more tragedies in our families," said Maria
Herrera, who founded a national collective investigating the
many forced disappearances in Mexico and where the number of gun
homicides is surging.
"It destroys lives, breaks families apart, fills communities
with pain and panic," Herrera said at the event. "We can't live
like this."
(Reporting by Sarah Morland; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
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