Another Reason For The Ammo Shortage

Everyone who has either tried to buy ammo in person or online knows that there is an ammo shortage. The primary reason for the shortage is that demand has increased more than the supply can be expanded. The growth in gun ownership over the past year and a half is one of the major reasons.

It seems there is another reason for the shortage.

Theft.

More specifically, an armed heist of two trucks containing approximately 7 million rounds of Aguila ammunition in Mexico.

From Business Insider:

The armed group intercepted the trucks on June 9 in the municipality of San Luis de la Paz, in the central state of Guanajuato, according to press reports. The drivers and security personnel were unharmed in the robbery. The trucks were found later, with their two trailers emptied of bullets.

The stolen ammunition was for 14 different types of guns and had an estimated value of $2.7 million, according to media estimates. While most of the ammunition was for small firearms, such as .22- and .40-caliber pistols, a significant portion of the bullets were for high-powered weapons, including AR-15 and M-16 rifles.

The trucks had left the Aguila Arms factory in Cuernavaca and were hijacked as they headed to Texas. The area where the hijacking occurred, San Luis de la Paz, is the scene of a bloody struggle between the Jalisco cartel and the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel. Fortunately, the unarmed drivers and guards were unharmed. This has led to speculation that this was an inside job.

Outdoor Life notes that earlier reports tried to downplay the robbery saying it was mostly just .22 LR ammo that would be useless to the cartels.

The Yucatan Times provided this breakdown of what was stolen.

  • 4 million 872 thousand high speed .22 caliber Long Rifle (LR) cartridges.
  • 1 million 230 thousand cartridges .22 caliber LR high speed PH
  • 295 thousand .40 caliber S&W cartridges
  • 215 thousand cartridges caliber .22 LR super hummingbird
  • 117 thousand .45 caliber automatic cartridges
  • 100 thousand cartridges .38 caliber special jacketed
  • 99 thousand M 7 1/2 high speed .410 caliber cartridges
  • 87 thousand cartridges caliber 7.62 × 51 mm 150 GN
  • 71,500 12-gauge minishell buckshot
  • 25 thousand cartridges caliber .38 super auto + P
  • 3,000 12-gauge minishell slug cartridges

None of the cartels are claiming credit for the heist. According to Insight Crime:

Stealing ammunition, especially on such a massive scale, is virtually unheard of in the Mexican underworld, and the bullets could filter to criminal groups, as does much of the ammunition smuggled from the United States.

To put the size of the robbery into perspective, Guanajuato’s attorney general said that 15,000 bullets in León, the state’s largest city, are enough to arm the entire municipal police. The stolen ammunition could supply the police force more than 460 times over, he said.

I have to admit that is a lot of ammo floating around the streets of Mexico. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure it is going to end up in the wrong hands.

Lott’s Mexico

Dr. John Lott had a new piece in the Wall Street Journal this week about Mexico’s extremely high murder rate despite its strict gun control laws.  

Photo Credit: The Wall Street Journal

The figures Lott quotes are staggering:  with almost six times as many murders per 100,000 people as in the U.S., Mexico has a serious problem.

By all accounts the problem may be of their own making.  As highlighted in the Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Mexico’s strict gun control measures began in 1972 ostensibly to control violence.  Presently only 1% of Mexicans possess a license to own a firearm, obtaining a permit to legally carry a pistol is unheard of and private sales are for all practical purposes forbidden yet since 1972 the murder rate has doubled! 

While addressing how many of Mexico’s crime guns come from the U.S., Dr. Lott explains why the 70% figure cited by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is grossly exaggerated. He points out that number is a select subset of a select subset and the actual number may be closer to 17%.

Furthermore, it appears evident the bulk of Mexico’s crime guns, often fully-automatic, are cartel supplied and originate in Central and South America or other international locations.  Once again, it is evidenced that when strict gun control laws leave the general population unarmed, vulnerable, and powerless, criminals will feel emboldened.  Layer onto this a history of military and police corruption along with a powerful cartel presence and you have the perfect recipe for out of control criminal violence.