Achievements on the front lines of a government blitzkrieg on gunrunners supplying Texas weaponry to Mexican drug cartels depends on logging heavy miles and knocking on countless doors. Dozens of agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) have been sent to Houston from around the nation. ATF acting director Kenneth Melson needs them to follow what he described as a "massive number of investigative leads."

According to the Houston Chronicle, "all told, Mexican officials in 2008 asked federal agents to trace the origins of more than 7,500 firearms recovered at crime scenes in Mexico. Most of them were traced back to Texas, California and Arizon. Among other things, the agents are combing neighborhoods and asking people about suspicious purchases as well as explanations as to how their guns ended up used in murders, kidnappings, and other crimes in Mexico." 

During a firearms-trafficking summit in New Mexico on Tuesday, Melson is quoted as saying, "ever turning up the heat on cartels, our law enforcement and military partners in the government of Mexico have been working more closely with the ATF by sharing information and intelligence."

As reported by the Chronicle, "the ATF recently dispatched 100 veteran agents to its Houston division, which reaches to the border. The mission is especially challenging, because, officials say, that while Houston is the number one point of origin for weapons traced back to the United States from Mexico, the government can't compile databases on gun owners under federal law."

Instead, agents must review firearms dealers' records in person.

Traffickers frequently recruit people, who are legally residing in the United States with a clean criminal record, but are facing economic dificulties, to purchase weapons on their behalf in order to shield themselves from scrutiny.

The ATF is combining their efforts with the Drug Enforcement Agency by utilizing an aircraft to follow stealthily traffickers to the border.

To read the entire article from the Houston Chronicle, link here:

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