President Joe Biden’s administration is inadvertently worsening the very problem it is trying to solve — the migrant crisis at the southern border— by facilitating a surge in gun-fueled violent crime in Latin America and beyond. The president, long a champion of gun safety, needs to move quickly to fix this policy failure.
The number of semi-automatic firearms exported from the US has more than doubled since 2016. As a Bloomberg News investigation reveals, these sales have generated big profits for the gun industry — while causing mayhem throughout the region, including at the US-Mexico border.
Guatemala is a case in point. Sales of US-made semi-automatic firearms to Guatemala are more than five times higher than in the 2010s and nearly double what they were just two years ago. While US gun manufacturers often sell to governments and security firms, the weapons soon find their way onto the black market and into the hands of criminals. After years of decline, murders in Guatemala have spiked, as have the numbers of Guatemalans fleeing to the US. Of the 2.2 million people who arrived at the southern border last year, 10 percent were Guatemalan, more than any other country save Mexico.