Blood Gun Money by Ioan Grillo

Much has been written about America’s relationship with guns, the ease by which Americans can buy guns, and in recent years, how this has fed into the never-ending roll-call of massacres (and here we have several weird euphemisms, such as “active shooters”). So people might be mistaken for assuming that they do not need yet another book on the subject, which would be wrong. Because the author of Blood Gun Money is not so interested in Americans and their guns as he is in the industry and how it feeds the narco-wars of Latin America and the gang violence which blights the projects of the inner cities. Because it turns out the legal arms industry fuels, and indeed supports, a massive illegal trade which the author calls the iron river.

Ioan Grillo proves definitely in this book that the iron river is the source of many of the criminal guns in Latin America today. What might be a surprise to readers is that most of the countries of Latin America have far stricter gun ownership laws than the US does. It’s difficult for someone to legally purchase a gun in Mexico. So what the Mexican cartels do is they get people to buy all the guns they need in the US and smuggle them across the border. And business is booming.

The NRA is (unsurprisingly) a villain in all this. By choking off even sensible gun control - such as background checks on private sales - they ensure that not only can criminals and those with serious mental health issues purchase firearms, but people can buy them for the cartels. It’s also incredibly easy to recruit straw buyers - people who buy multiple guns at once from gun shops on the criminals’ behalf - and to rob gun stores. A dirty truth is the arms industry doesn’t want to stop this. Guns are non perishable, so apart from a few serious collectors and those who truly believe an apocalypse is coming and thus they have to have an arsenal, most people buy one or two guns and then have them for years. So how does the arms industry stay afloat? Well, the criminal economy subsidises them, how else to explain why there’s more gun stores in border states? It’s not just Latin America either. There’s an internal trade, states with tougher gun control having weapons smuggled into them from more libertarian states, which undermines efforts by anyone to toughen up the law.  

Grillo travels to various locations to demonstrate all this - talking to gun manufacturers, FBI and ATF agents, and criminals. He visits the ATF gun tracing center in West Virginia, which despite being hampered by ludicrous legislation which prevents them from holding any records or registers (again, courtesy of the NRA, who really has much blood on its hands) proves repeatedly the source of weapons which turn up in killings in Mexico and elsewhere. All this brings colour to the statistics, but it’s the data which proves his case, and there’s just so much evidence. 

This is an eye-opening read, though quite depressing, because you know as a reader that it’s unlikely to register with the US electorate. Trump and others (the Democrats play this game as well) bemoan illegal immigrants and drugs coming north, while turning a blind eye to the export of weapons which kill and maim. Yes, the ATF arrests and prosecutes people (and if the NRA are a villain of the piece, the ATF really are unsung heroes) but sentences are far too low, and the political will is just not there to do more.

To be fair to the Democrats, Biden has pledged to plug some of these legislative holes and we’ll have to see if he manages it, because this book shows America needs to do so. 

5 out of 5 stars