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M<\/span>exico was rocked this week by a wave of brutal violence after the capture of the drug lord Nemesio Rub\u00e9n Oseguera Cervantes, AKA \u201cEl Mencho\u201d<\/a>, as members of his powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel blew up trucks, fired on police stations and engaged in gun battles with Mexican security forces.<\/p>\n The chaos eventually calmed but not before 62 people had been killed, including a pregnant woman caught in the cross fire. The scale of the carnage, as well as the arsenal involved, has underscored<\/a> a key element of Mexico\u2019s struggle against organised crime: cartels are armed to the teeth, and most of their weapons are trafficked from the US.<\/p>\n As the smoke from the burning blockades cleared, Mexico\u2019s defence minister, Ricardo Trevilla Trejo, said the vast majority of weapons seized after El Mencho\u2019s capture \u2013 including a Barrett rifle, a rocket launcher, grenades and mortar rounds \u2013 had come from across the border. Since the start of the administration of President Claudia Sheinbaum<\/a>, Trejo said, Mexican authorities had seized 23,000 weapons, of which 80% came from the US.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ability of criminal groups to exercise this type of power and exercise this type of violence is closely linked to firearms trafficking,\u201d said Cecilia Farf\u00e1n-M\u00e9ndez, an expert on Mexican organised crime. \u201cIf we want to see less violence in Mexico<\/a>, this is a very important conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n Mexico has extremely strict gun ownership laws: the country only has two gun stores, both run by the Mexican military, which enforces strict regulation on the purchase of weapons. But in the US, loose gun legislation and a national obsession with firearms mean guns are readily available to buy and traffic south of the border.<\/p>\n