Why did a cartel use a small Wisconsin town to traffic guns?
- A small town helped traffick thousands of guns across the border
- The guns were bought legally in the U.S. then taken illegally to Mexico
- The Jalisco cartel has family ties to residents of the small town
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(NewsNation) — A small Wisconsin town has been put in the national spotlight after a Reuters investigation shed light on how Racine, Wisconsin, got wrapped up in one of the largest gun trafficking cases in U.S. history.
The article sheds light on how the Mexican cartel was able to get U.S. citizens to legally buy military-grade weapons before illegally taking them across the border.
According to the investigation, the cartel was able to exploit lax gun laws to purchase the weapons. These traffickers spent more than $600,000 on guns in Racine, with purchases continuing across the U.S. as the cartel bought hundreds of additional guns traced to other states.
While most U.S. gun owners are law-abiding, retired Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agent Timothy Sloan told NewsNation that some will take advantage of lax laws and engage in illegal activity.
He noted it’s difficult for dealers to know when illegal activity is happening when multiple people are buying just one or two guns each from an individual dealer.
As for why Wisconsin? It’s all about family ties.
“Wisconsin was chosen for one reason only,” Sloan said. “And that is because this family is originally from Jalisco, Mexico, that has family ties to the Jalisco drug cartel. And that family relocated to Wisconsin.”
