page_title: Mexican Drug War
section_title: Smuggling of firearms
hierarchical_section_title: Mexican Drug War / Firearms / Smuggling of firearms
caption_attribution_description: An 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper fires his M-4 equipped with a C-MAG 100-round magazine July 23, 2003 at the Kandahar Air Field weapons range.
context_page_description: The Mexican Drug War is the Mexican theater of the global war on drugs, as led by the U.S. federal government, that has resulted in an ongoing asymmetric low-intensity conflict between the Mexican government and various drug trafficking syndicates. When the Mexican military began to intervene in 2006, the government's principal goal was to reduce drug-related violence. The Mexican government has asserted that their primary focus is on dismantling the powerful drug cartels, and on preventing drug trafficking demand along with the U.S. functionaries.
  Violence escalated soon after the arrest of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo in 1989; he was the leader and the founder of the first Mexican drug cartel, the Guadalajara Cartel, an alliance of the current existing cartels headed by Félix Gallardo. Due to his arrest, the alliance broke and certain high-ranking members formed their own cartels and each of them fought for control of territory and trafficking routes.
  Although Mexican drug trafficking organizations have existed for several decades, their influence increased after the demise of the Colombian Cali and Medellín cartels in the 1990s.
context_section_description: Mexicans have a constitutional right to own firearms, but legal purchase from the single Mexican gun shop in Mexico City is extremely difficult. Firearms that make their way to Mexico come from the American civilian market. Most grenades and rocket-launchers are smuggled through Guatemalan borders, as leftovers from past conflicts in Nicaragua. However some grenades are also smuggled from the U.S. to Mexico or stolen from the Mexican military.
  The most common weapons used by the cartels are the AR-15, M16, M4, AK-47, AKM and Type 56 assault rifles. Handguns are very diverse, but the FN Five-seven (dubbed Matapolicías or Cop-killer by criminals) is a popular choice due to its armor-piercing capability. Grenade launchers are known to have been used against Mexican security forces, H&K G36s and M4 carbines with M203 grenade launchers have been confiscated.
caption: Beta C-Mag double drum magazine (locally called Huevos de Toro, Spanish for "bull testicles") on an M4 Carbine
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