translated from Spanish: In 4 years, weapons attacks in Mexico double

The assault that a boy starred in last Friday at a school in Torreón, Coahuila, where he shot his teacher and classmates with two illegal pistols, is one of the last sample buttons of an increasingly serious phenomenon in Mexico: the increase in attacks with weapons fire and lack of proper controls.
Official figures show the size of the problem. In a period of just four years, gun homicides, intentional injuries caused by them, and even accidental gunshot wounds have doubled. In the same way the number of people who say they have heard gunshots near their home has grown. But at the same time the forupees have collapsed.
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Between January and November 2019, according to data of the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (SESNSP), 22 thousand 413 people were killed with a firearm. That’s an average of at least 67 people shot dead every day in Mexico.
In those same months, but from 2015, the number of people killed with firearms was less than half: 9 thousand 570. Even taking into account factors such as population growth, this is an increase in the rate of intentional homicides with firearms above 100%.
The same goes for the number of cases of people attacked (not killed) with firearms. The figure rose more than 100% from 5,218 people injured from January to November 2015, to 11,310 victims in the same period, but from 2019.
Even accidental firearm injuries have doubled in this period in the country, from 229 victims in 2015 to 447 in 2019, according to cases reported by SESNSP.
There are other figures that show the seriousness of the proliferation of firearms. For example, INEGI’s latest National Urban Public Security Survey reveals that the proportion of people reporting to have heard gunshots near their home has doubled: it rose from 23% in September 2015 to 41.4% in September 2019.
INEGI’s 2019 National Survey of Victimization and Perception on Public Safety found that in 32.2% of crimes criminals carried firearms, a higher level than in 2016, which was 28.4%.
This means that, on average, 1 in 3 crimes are committed with a firearm in Mexico.
Illegal proliferation
The report of the non-governmental organization “Mexico Evaluates” called “Industrial Preventive Prison: Insufficient for firearms control”, states from various official sources and specialist estimates more data on the proliferation of firearms weapons, and insufficient response from authority.
According to the document, the number of households reporting to have acquired a firearm grew from 203,000 117 in 2013 to 220,000,178 in 2018. He adds that, according to figures from the Ministry of National Defence (Sedena), there would be 3 million 118 thousand firearms duly registered in the country.
The problem, the report points out, is that international estimates suggest that there is a much higher number of illegal weapons in Mexico: up to 13.6 million pistols and rifles present in the country, four times more than legal ones.
Mexico Assesses warns that at the end of 2018 the Sedena reported just 3,156 arms carry licences issued, a figure far away even in relation to the number of official weapons registered.
Worse still, even the weapons that officially enter the country for the security forces become a problem. Data from the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights indicate that between 2006 and 2017 20 thousand 66 firearms were recorded “lost” by police corporations, among stolen, lost, or missing. It is almost 4% of all weaponry sold to security forces in that period.
Despite all of the above, the arms foretakes have been drastically reduced. The figure rose from 40,996 weapons seized in 2011 to just 4,976 insured in 2018, according to the data referred to in the report. A figure almost 10 times lower.
“It is obvious that the number of weapons in circulation far exceeds those legally registered by the authority. This is of great concern, as it shows that the country has a serious problem of the movement of arms through the black market. The most alarming thing is that the State does not have the necessary tools to combat this problem,” Mexico’s Evalúa’s analysis warns.
Old or non-existent controls
David Ramírez de Garay, program coordinator in Security of Mexico Evaluates, said in interview that while our country’s demand to the United States for greater arms control is right (it is estimated that more than 213 thousand weapons enter each year for the rub Mexico has in its hands several slopes in the matter that it has not solved.
For example, the specialist stressed that the only legal rule regulating the possession and carrying of weaponry in Mexico is the Federal Law on Firearms and Explosives, a rule dating back to 1972, that is, almost half a century ago. And while some changes have been made to it, it is a rule created in a context of society, controls and the market that no longer exist.
In addition, this is the lack of adequate, clear and approved controls for the management and preservation of armaments that are delivered each year to the many security corporations that exist in our country, which has to some extent favored the disappearance of thousands of such weapons.
In addition, Ramírez points out that Mexico has a well-structured system of early warnings regarding firearms. That defines, for example, what is the clear procedure that medical personnel must follow to notify an authority when treating a person injured by a gunshot wound in a hospital.
Preventive measures are also lacking. For example, in matters of gender-based violence, a mechanism is needed to ask victims if the perpetrators have firearms in their homes, which would allow the authorities to investigate these people and if they need to be confiscated Weapons.
“It is proven that this type of aggressions that are committed at the time to beatings or with white weapons then scale to firearms. Organizations like Equis Justice have documented how more and more women are killed with firearms. But today there is no way to prevent such cases before they happen,” he said.
The specialist also warned that country-approved protocols are needed for the tracking, identification and exchange of data that the various authorities collect when dealing with or investigating a crime. Systems such as so-called “CODIS” are known to record information are known to exist, but the protocols, resources, and infrastructure they have are unknown.
“In short, we don’t know what’s going on with the weapons being sequesive or how they’re investigated,” he said.
Responsibility is not only federal. States also lack real prevention programs like the so-called “Cease Fire” implemented in Baltimore (EU), which allows people involved in acts of gun violence to be identified and tracked.
With regard to the arms exchange programmes that some entities had implemented, Ramírez stressed that there was no serious assessment of their impact and usefulness, although he cautioned that international experience had documented that these are more symbolic actions than Effective. “They serve for a nice photo, but nothing beyond,” he said.
What the government prepares
To address the deficiencies related to arms management in Mexico, the federal government is preparing at least three initiatives that Animal Político can advance now. This is confirmed by official sources:
Initiative to Update the Federal Arms Act
It is an initiative that prepares the Silk and that aims to become a major surgery than the old law that comes from 1972. In addition to updating arms catalogues, restrictions and sanctions, this would include guidelines on data transparency and registrations in accordance with current national and international standards.
The elaboration of this initiative was commented last November by Lieutenant Colonel Rafael Arriola Barrera, head of the Manufacturing and Marketing Section of the General Directorate of the Federal Register of Firearms and Control of Explosives of Sedena. There is not yet a specific date for the submission of such an initiative.
Guidelines to prevent loss of official weapons
In order to prevent mishandling and mishandling of the armament that is delivered to the various security corporations in the country, sESNSP through the National Information Center works on the development of a series of general guidelines, which must follow mandatory institutions.
These are approved controls that would have to be applied, for example, in the various armouries of municipal or state police, or profiles to be met by the persons responsible for them.
Consolidated procurement policy
This is another mechanism for ordering the acquisition of official armament. What is currently happening is that each state or municipality decides on its own when and what armament to buy, which causes logistical complications of control for the Silkena, which is the sole responsible for supplying such orders,
The proposal that is prepared seeks to standardize and unify these procedures so that there is a catalogue of armaments and established dates to which the authorities requiring the armament must adhere. This would be an exercise similar to the one already done last year for the purchase of bulletproof vests.
Along with these actions are organizations and specialists that have issued more recommendations. For example, Mexico AssessesIt is based on the importance of creating a Mexican Firearms Control Agency, which not only takes control of the registration and trade of firearms, but also combats their illegal trafficking, with all that this entails: policies, research, statistics, etc.
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Original source in Spanish