701: Ioan Grillo | How America Arms Gangs and Cartels Part Two

Ioan Grillo (@ioangrillo) is a contributing writer at The New York Times specializing in crime and drugs. He is the author of El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency; Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America; and Blood Gun Money: How America Arms Gangs and Cartels. [This is part two of a two-part episode. Make sure to check out part one here!]

What We Discuss with Ioan Grillo:

• The Iron River • may sound like something you'd find on a map of Westeros, but it's just a quaint term for the 200,000 guns manufactured or sold in the US moving across the border to Mexico every year.

• The private-sale loophole • that allows "collectors" in the US to sell guns without requiring identification, background checks, or paperwork — often to criminals and cartels at a tidy profit.

• How "straw buyers" — that is, people with clean records — are paid by gun traffickers to pass background checks • and buy firearms en masse without raising any red flags. If they are arrested in the act, however, their punishment rarely exceeds probation.

• There are 130,000 licensed firearms dealers in the US • from which ill-intentioned gun traffickers can make their shady purchases. If that doesn't sound like that • many, consider that there are only 14,000 McDonald's restaurants. •

• Thanks to a Reagan-era law enacted ostensibly to protect the privacy of gun owners, the ATF finds its ability to efficiently trace guns hobbled because it can't use searchable, digital databases of sales. •

• And much more...

Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/701

Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course!

Miss the conversation we had with behavioral economist Dan Ariely about the invisible (and often frustrating) clockwork that makes us tick? Catch up with episode 417: Dan Ariely | The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations here!

Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.