The New York TimesArt Direction: John Custer
year-old inmate calmly explained to me how he trafficked hundreds of guns a year from the United States to Mexico. He never bothered paying American citizen straw buyers to purchase the weapons for him, he said. Instead, he would go to one of the many weekend gun shows around Dallas and take advantage of the so-called gun show loophole to buy firearms from private sellers without a background check or proof of citizenship.
He would drive back to Mexico with about a dozen guns hidden in refrigerators and stoves in the back of his truck, and sell the weapons in his hometown, a few hours south of the Rio Grande. His most requested weapon, he told me, was the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, which he could buy for as little as $500 and sell for five times that. He became richer than he had dreamed, buying a house and new trucks and motorbikes
April 2018