Why a 'Great Wall' Won't Stop the Cross-Border Gun Trade
Why a 'Great Wall' Won't Stop the Cross-Border Gun Trade
Legal gun sales – and black market forces – keep arms flowing across the U.S.-Mexico border.
That Mexico’s drug cartels get their firepower from the United States is no longer much of a mystery. Even President Donald Trump has acknowledged that the U.S. should do more to curb the flow of arms across its southern border.
But Trump’s plan to stop that flow — at least as it pertains to the construction of a “great wall” — doesn’t fully take into account the market forces of the arms trade on both sides of the border. Any effort to limit Mexican cartels’ access to arms will first require policies that more closely monitor legal sales in the United...
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