El País recently reported that Maricopa County in central Arizona has “emerged as the ‘main epicenter’ of illegal arms trafficking into Mexico, according to John Lindsay-Poland, coordinator of Stop US Arms to Mexico, an initiative that studies the illicit flow of weapons between the two countries.”
As noted in the article, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) employs a metric known as time-to-crime or TTC to help identify salient patterns of firearms trafficking into Mexico. TTC specifically measures the amount of time that elapses between a firearm’s initial purchase and its subsequent recovery by law enforcement in connection with a particular criminal investigation.
By using TTC analysis, the ATF was able to determine that Maricopa County “contains multiple ZIP codes associated with large numbers of firearms that are trafficked into Mexico and later recovered in crimes there, according to records obtained through public-information requests.”
ATF analysis also revealed that “a significant share of these weapons, particularly assault-style rifles and large-caliber firearms, cross the border shortly after being legally purchased in the United States and ultimately end up in the hands of organized crime groups in Mexico.”
According to “Corridors of Violence,” the report recently published by Stop US Arms to Mexico, “14 of the 15 ZIP codes from which the largest numbers of firearms were purchased and later recovered in Mexico within a year between 2023 and 2024 were located in Arizona.” The report further noted that “more than two-thirds of the firearms recovered in Mexico in 2024 and traced back to the United States came from just three counties: Maricopa County, in the Phoenix metropolitan area (53.9%); Pima County, home to Tucson (8.8%); and Harris County, in the Houston area of Texas (6.4%).”
Lindsay-Poland has identified Arizona’s permissive gun laws and a concentration of firearms dealers in Maricopa County as factors contributing to this dynamic.
He has also cited “internal conflict among criminal factions in Sinaloa” as another key factor in generating a high demand for weapons “in both Sonora and Sinaloa, making them the Mexican states with the highest number of firearms seizures.”
The El País investigation expands upon an article published in early October by The New York Times that profiled a group of teenagers and young adults, ages 16 to 19, from the Phoenix metropolitan area who were involved in trafficking firearms to criminal organizations operating in Mexico.
According to the Times, proximity to Mexico and “a large presence of U.S.-based cartel operatives” have facilitated the development of these networks, and U.S. authorities are warning that “Mexican criminal groups are increasingly relying on teenagers and young adults in border states like Arizona.”
The participation of teenagers and young adults in firearms trafficking represents the latest feature of a much larger stream of illicit firearms into Mexico. Although the full extent of firearms trafficking is difficult to quantify with any specificity, the Mexican government estimates that a staggering 500,000 firearms are smuggled from the United States into Mexico every year.
Ultimately, the emergence of the Phoenix metropolitan area as a major source of firearms trafficking into Mexico, along with the increasing involvement of teenagers and young adults from the area in trafficking networks, demonstrates the extent to which the violence associated with Mexico’s struggle against drug cartels is affected not only by criminal organizations operating within Mexico but also by factors originating in the United States.
