Texas guns supply the cartels

DALLAS – The Dallas Morning News reports that guns purchased from a single ZIP code in Grand Prairie, Texas, have been popping up in Mexico in significant numbers over the past several years. From 2015-2022, the 75051 ZIP code was the source of more confiscated guns – roughly three dozen per year – in Mexico than from any other Texas ZIP code not located on the border. Furthermore, a recent federal firearms report shows Texas is the nation’s leading supplier of illicit guns to Mexico’s drug cartels and other criminal organizations, representing 43% of the total. Those are among the revelatory findings culled from a federal gun tracing database obtained by a nonprofit organization and analyzed recently by The Dallas Morning News.

At first glance, the data might suggest Grand Prairie is a hub for international arms trafficking. Dig a little deeper, however, and a more nuanced story emerges – one that not only reveals the challenges of firearms tracing as a tool against gun traffickers, but also illuminates the ongoing national debate between gun rights groups and gun safety advocates over whether such data should be made public. Tracing can be helpful to agents, revealing patterns used by criminals and identifying possible suspects. And it can be used to alert gun sellers. But the data also can be of limited value when a gun’s serial number is filed off, when the sales paperwork is missing or when the firearms are old. Those guns from Grand Prairie are a prime example. The 275 Grand Prairie confiscated guns, it turns out, are very old. Some were bought so long ago that the North Texas gun store owners who sold them are long dead.