The crisis on the U.S. southern border continues to be a mainstay on the American political conscience and will likely be decisive to the November election as migrants from Mexico and other Latin American nations are consistently cast as the antagonists in a narrative of invasion. But refugee border crossers are primarily fleeing a tsunami of violence stoked by unregulated U.S. gun merchants.
After 10 years of intrepid cross-border research, Brown University anthropology professor Ieva Jusionyte explains it all in her new book, “Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence Across the Border.” Host Robert Scheer dissects the discrepancies in one of the biggest issues in U.S. politics on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast.
In the U.S., according to Jusionyte, nearly 10,000 gun shops flourish along the border, whereas Mexico boasts a mere two nationwide. “There is no gun industry in Mexico, and the two gun stores are run by the military, because the Mexican military is the only one authorized to import and sell guns to Mexican civilians,” Jusionyte explained.
Jusionyte’s personal odyssey, transitioning from an EMT treating migrants on the border to a scholar studying gun violence firsthand in Mexico, exemplifies the profound misunderstanding surrounding violence south of the border and the perceived threat penetrating the U.S. While politicians like Donald Trump put all the blame on Mexicans and other Latin American populations, the reality of America’s gun industry paints a different picture.
As the rhetoric towards migrants and the border is sure to intensify, Jusionyte advocates for the anthropologists’ perspective on things:
“I think it is important to turn that gaze onto our own society, in this case, the United States, and our attachment to guns and what kind of effect it has on the neighboring country and on our inability then to understand how to fix these perpetual crises on the border.”
