No Shelter from the Storm: Update on Iron River of Guns New Data on the U.S. Gun Trade to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean

By John Lindsay-Poland

The U.S. firearms market is generating growing storms of violence in neighboring countries. From Mexico – where traffickers in fentanyl and other criminal businesses are armed with thousands of U.S.- sourced assault weapons and .50 caliber rifles – to Haiti, where gangs armed with rifles easily purchased and smuggled from Florida and Georgia dominate and terrorize broad swaths of territory – the permissive, militarized and enormous gun trade in the United States is driving thousands of families to flee their homelands, arming the men who disappear people and commit femicide, empowering traders in narcotics that take thousands more lives, and looting economies. The damage is not limited to Mexico and Haiti. Firearms homicides – just one indicator of gun harms – have grown in Jamaica, Barbados, Central America and other nations, in tandem with the retail proliferation of U.S. weapons. In Guatemala, the exponential growth of exports of U.S. pistols has fed weapons trafficking and homicide rates. The United States is not exempt, of course: there were more shootings in U.S. schools in the last three years than any prior year.1 The concept frequently used for this violence is that of a pandemic: the health consequences of gun violence are severe and growing, with firearms and bullets as vectors and agents, respectively.2 But gun violence also behaves like a storm system in its violence and shattering effects. And the islands in which people may imagine that they are safe from these storms of gun violence are shrinking.

San Francisco, CA Stop US Arms to Mexico, 2025. 9p