There's been quite a bit of press recently about the inflow of "assault rifles" and other weapons into Mexico. Unfortunately, much of it is incorrect and it presents erroneous information about both the weapons available in the US and the laws the control their sale. Most egregiously, Gen. Barry McCaffrey keeps repeating these incorrect facts in his well-publicized presentations on the criminal problems in Mexico.
First, the "assault rifles" mentioned in these articles are typically said to be AK-47s. A real AK-47 assault rifle is a fully-automatic rifle—it will keep firing as long as you press and hold the trigger back. You can't buy these over the counter in America because fully-automatic rifles are not allowed to be manufactured, imported, or sold to US civilians.
There are two key controlling Federal laws here. The first is 1934's National Firearms Act (NFA), which tightly controls civilian ownership of machine guns by requiring FBI background checks and permission of your local police chief before you're allowed to take possession. The second is 1986's Firearms Owners' Protection Act, which prohibits civilian ownership of any machine guns manufactured after 1986. These two laws combine to make it virtually impossible for anyone to sell true assault rifles to civilians.
You can buy semi-automatic rifles that look like the fully-automatic AK-47s, but they aren't the same thing. The narco terrorists aren't using these wimpy semi-automatic versions when the fully automatic ones are easily available via the global arms market and corrupt (non-US) military personnel. Sure, a small number of semi-automatics are being smuggled into Mexico, but they represent only a very small percentage of the total number of weapons flowing into the area and aren't causing the problems the Mexican people currently face.
This is in direct contrast to Gen. McCaffrey's assertion that 90% of the weapons are smuggled across the US boarder. In fact, recent testimony by the ATF on the number of weapons being smuggled into Mexico from the US places the numbers in the hundreds, and that the military hardware is coming from other sources, not the US. The number of weapons flowing into Mexico is in the hundreds of thousands, so the US is not even supplying 1% of all the weapons.
(Speaking of military hardware, similar errors of fact are made by news reports that claim that hand grenades are being bought in US gun shops and at gun shows, then being smuggled across into Mexico. Again, hand grenades are categorized as "destructive devices" by the NFA, so they're subject to the same restrictions as machine guns and require a $200 per device transfer tax even if someone passes all the other ownership hurdles. I know the narco-terrorists are flush with cash, but even they aren't going to pay $200+ a hand grenade.)
One has to wonder why such an experienced person such as Gen. McCaffrey continues to repeat such grossly incorrect information. I think he's right to be concerned about what's happening down in Mexico, but pointing a finger of blame at American guns and gun owners is both wrong and distracting from the real root causes that we should be addressing.
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