Conducted under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, intended to stem the flow of firearms to Mexico, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) ran a series of “gun walking” sting operations, including Operations Wide Receiver and Operation Fast & Furious. The government allowed licensed gun dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers so that they could continue to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher-level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels. Motivated by a sense of patriotic duty, Tucson gun dealer and author Mike Detty alerted the local ATF office when he was first approached by suspected cartel associates. Detty made the commitment and assumed the risks involved to help the feds make their case, often selling guns to these thugs from his home in the dead of night. Originally informed that the investigation would last just weeks, Detty’s undercover involvement in Operation Wide Receiver, the precursor to Operation Fast & Furious, which was by far the largest “gun walking” probe, stretched on for an astonishing and dangerous three years. Though the case took several twists and turns, perhaps the cruelest turn was his betrayal by the very agency he risked everything to help.

More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USA.

This report relies primarily on previously unreleased trace data provided by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ("ATF") to Mayors Against Illegal Guns to describe which states are the predominant suppliers of those guns recovered and traced in Mexico. This new data shows that four in ten of the U.S. guns recovered in Mexico between 2006 and 2009 were originally sold by gun dealers in Texas. The three other states that share a border with Mexico--Arizona, California, and New Mexico--were the source for another one-third of the U.S. guns.

"Guns are relational: they can be tools of violence or of protection. Bullets injure individuals and communities, creating collective damage. In the United States, gun violence has reached alarming levels, but the effects of firearms sold in this country don't stop at its borders. American guns have torn the social fabric of Mexican society in ways that have entangled the lives of citizens on both sides of the border-Mexicans and Americans-in a vicious circle of violence. While migrants and refugees are fleeing north, seeking safety in the United States, Exit Wounds follows the guns going south, from dealers in Arizona and Texas to crime scenes in Mexico. Through stories of people who live and work with guns on both sides of the border and either side of the law-a businessman who smuggles guns, a girl who becomes a trained assassin, two federal agents who try to stop gun traffickers, a journalist reporting on organized crime-the book grapples with US complicity in violence south of the border and examines the impact of American guns on both countries"--