Gun Smuggling

Gun Smuggling
Gun smuggling is an issue to any gun control measure, simply because laws only are as effective as they can be enforced. If you want to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, you need to ensure that your laws, that don't allow anyone to own guns, can be applied to criminals, as well. If they can find alternative means for obtaining the goods you've prohibited, essentially the law becomes worthless, as they can obtain that good anyways. While you may be able to stop a handful of criminals from possessing guns if they were made illegal, unless the good outweighs the bad, such as the now black market for it fueling crime (in the case of alcohol prohibition, for instance) or outweighing the benefit guns have in self defense, a gun control law wouldn't be worth it. There's also obviously the issue of freedom and rights being infringed by banning firearms, but many gun control proponents from the outset probably aren't very concerned about that. Irregardless however, if criminals can still obtain the guns in sizable enough quantities to offset any advantage of banning them, than a gun ban isn't worth it. Whenever guns can be illegally smuggled across the border in to the U.S. despite a gun ban, just like drugs, people and other forms of contraband, you effectively remove any teeth a piece of legislation might have. A criminal who might get 15 years for armed robbery likely won't care too much about a few extra years for a weapons charge, meaning it isn't a severe enough penalty for them to care. A person about to murder someone likely would't care too much at all what the extra penalty for owning a gun was, even if it was extremely severe. In essence, criminals already do illegal things, so adding more illegal things to the list likely isn't a primary concern to them. Especially when it does carry a lesser charge.

Obviously, most guns smuggled across the border or illegally produced in underground factories aren't done by the criminals who use them, themselves. Most of the people who consume drugs for instance don't smuggle it across the border themselves, but rather purchase it from a dealer, who himself purchases it from a gang, and of which that gang purchases it from a bigger gang. The Cartels  or Mafia smuggle the drugs across the border itself, and then proliferate it among local street gangs, who sell it to the drug dealers, which is how it ends up in the hands of the average person. Despite being illegal, drugs are so prolific that more than 38% of the population have reported trying illegal drugs [1], and 9.4% admit to currently using drugs. [2] 35.1% of highschoolers report having used marijuana at least once, suggesting that even kids are consuming them at alarming rates. [3] Nearly 50% of new drug users will be teenagers each year. When unreported accounts are considered, it's likely to be much higher than this. Because the same exact smugglers that smuggle drugs also smuggle guns, people and other contraband, it's easy to see just how prolific the gun trade could be, and already is. These criminals overwhelmingly smuggle the guns across the border with them and then sell them to other criminals, rather than purchase them at gun stores which requires a background check, often a waiting period, and is usually more expensive. It's clear that they can get drugs even to children at highschools, and thus the prolific nature of their other contraband is likely to be as prevalent. Physically, there's not much difference between smuggling a gun across the border, and drugs. Guns are actually harder to catch, as metal guns don't leave behind a unique scent for a dog to pick up on, unlike many forms of drugs. Wood and metal just smell like the rest of the car a person is in, and make it harder to smuggle. Guns can also be smuggled across the border in pieces, further making it difficult to detect.

It's not very difficult to see why drugs are so prevalent, as well as guns among criminals. Between 1-10% of land based border crossings result in criminals being caught ever year [Page 24], meaning that some 90-99% of criminals are capable of getting across the border without being detected. Only around 3-5% of sea containers are even screened for contraband or concealed people, meaning over 95% of contraband likely gets in. [Page 56] As nearly 500,000 to a million undocumented immigrants are able to get past the border every year, individuals with billions of dollars and organization have a much easier time doing so. Given that the border is almost completely open as it is, it's easy to see why nearly anything, including human beings, can get across the border. It shouldn't come as a surprise that approximately 40% of gangs are involved in arms trafficking, and that gun trafficking is fairly common in general.

Another common problem with illegal gun trafficking is that the weapons are generally untraceable. AS they were made in a foreign country usually illegally, there is no record of them in the U.S.'s or any other governments records, thus meaning it's almost to trace the firearms to a particular purchaser. When done off the books, there obviously are no records left behind.