After the Mexican military killed drug cartel kingpin Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, widely known as El Mencho, officials detailed the weapons recovered in the firefights. The stockpile included a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, 10 long arms, handguns, and grenades, officials said.
Mexico Defense Minister Ricardo Trevilla Trejo said that, as with other Mexican crime scenes, about 80% of the recovered weapons were bought in the United States and smuggled across the border. The details were shared in a Feb. 23 news conference, a day after the killing of El Mencho.
Gun ownership in Mexico is tightly restricted. There is only one military-run gun store in the country, in Mexico City, where weapons sales are strictly regulated. But easy access to guns in the United States has created an "iron river" of firearms flooding Mexico's black market.
"Our gun laws and gun industry practices fuel an iron river of firearms trafficking that supplies Mexican drug cartels and other criminal elements in the region," Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin from Illinois said in a news release in 2025, announcing a bill he hoped would rein in the gun smuggling.
Statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives roughly back up Mexico's figures, that the vast majority of weapons in Mexico come from the United States. Countries around the world ask the ATF to trace weapons found at their crime scenes. The ATF said 74% of the guns used in a crime were linked to a U.S. purchaser from 2017 to 2021.
