North Texas firearms traffickers often use two common methods to acquire guns, including assault rifles and military-style weapons, for criminal organizations...
Texas was the top U.S. source for guns used in a crime and recovered in Mexico from 2017 to 2021, responsible for 43% of firearm traces, according to an ATF report released earlier this year. And North Texas has become a thriving market for the high-powered assault rifles and other guns traffickers provide to Mexican drug cartels to maintain their terror grip and distribute drugs like fentanyl, officials say. An estimated 200,000 U.S. guns reach Mexico each year.
The U.S. gun industry, some legal experts say, has used its formidable political influence over Congress to weaken U.S. gun laws and enforcement efforts.Until last summer, the U.S. didn’t have a firearms trafficking law. That meant prosecutors relied on relatively minor “paper offenses,” which are often difficult to prove, like lying on a federal form, selling guns without a license, and exporting goods without a license.
Even when firearms traffickers are found and convicted, they often get just a handful of years in prison, even probation and time served, court records show.This contributes to the growing frustration of Mexican officials, who complained for years that drug cartels are armed with high-powered American guns like AR-15s, AK-47s and .50 caliber armor-piercing rifles, allowing them to continue their drug and racketeering activities.
Hernandez, who was unemployed, said he shopped for firearms on the internet and recruited Rangel-Manjarrez to buy them “to avoid drawing suspicion to himself,” court records show.In March 2020, Hernandez met with an undercover agent in Dallas to whom he paid $7,500 for a .50-caliber Barrett rifle. Hernandez gave the undercover agent’s phone number to a cartel member in Mexico, a detention order said. Hernandez also recruited others, the order said.
A Fort Worth man was arrested for trying to buy a military-grade M-60 machine gun for delivery to a Mexican drug cartel. Daniel Loyola Jr., 24, pleaded guilty in December 2022 to possession of a machine gun and was sentenced in March to a decade in prison.
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