Blood Gun Money: How America Arms Gangs and Cartels

Product Description
“An eye-opening and riveting account of how guns make it into the black market and into the hands of criminals and drug lords.” –Adam WinklerFrom the author of El Narco, a searing investigation into the enormous black market for firearms, essential to cartels and gangs in the drug trade and contributing to the epidemic of mass shootings.The gun control debate is revived with every mass shooting. But far more people die from gun deaths on the street corners of inner city America and across the border as Mexico's powerful cartels battle to control the drug trade. Guns and drugs aren't often connected in our heated discussions of gun control-but they should be. In Ioan Grillo's groundbreaking new work of investigative journalism, he shows us this connection by following the market for guns in the Americas and how it has made the continent the most murderous on earth.Grillo travels to gun manufacturers, strolls the aisles of gun shows and gun shops, talks to FBI agents who have infiltrated biker gangs, hangs out on Baltimore street corners, and visits the ATF gun tracing center in West Virginia. Along the way, he details the many ways that legal guns can cross over into the black market and into the hands of criminals, fueling violence here and south of the border. Simple legislative measures would help close these loopholes, but America's powerful gun lobby is uncompromising in its defense of the hallowed Second Amendment. Perhaps, however, if guns were seen not as symbols of freedom, but as key accessories in our epidemics of addiction, the conversation would shift. Blood Gun Money is that conversation shifter.
Review
"With conversational prose and audacious reporting, [Grillo] etches brisk vignettes of A.T.F. agents, gunrunners, hit men and straw purchasers, switching among more characters and exotic locales than an international thriller ― from a peace activist near a gun factory in Germany’s Black Forest to ‘Fresa,’ an executioner of 45 who eventually dies by the gun himself." - The New York Times Book Review’s The Shortlist"Ioan Grillo is one of the best reporters covering the cartels, crime and carnage south of the border. In Blood Gun Money, he traces the drug-gun pipeline that runs straight from that violence to the beating heart of America. It's even weirder and bloodier than the fiction." - Don Winslow, author of THE CARTEL and THE BORDER"Grillo approaches the issue of proliferating firearms from myriad angles. . . . [He] brings more than two decades of intimate experience to the task, much of that spent in Mexico covering the impact of the ‘iron river’ of firearms that flows south from America into the hands of drug cartels and remorseless gangsters." - USA Today"Expertly maps the grisly North American landscape for firearms." - Nick Miroff, The Washington Post"Cuts to the chase in its multifaceted portrayal of an enduring battle. . . . an even-handed portrayal of the often frustrating pervasiveness of the gun traffic, interviewing scores of individuals who are on both sides. Investigative Journalism has never felt so palpably poignant." - City Book Review"Grillo has a well-deserved reputation as a fierce investigative reporter in Latin America . . . now he focuses his attention on the ‘iron river’ of legal guns that go on the black market through private sales, theft, and shady purchasing to make the Americas so murderous. . . . [A] shocking, arresting account of gun trafficking." - National Book Review"An alarming and deeply reported account of how the U.S. gun trade fuels bloodshed, terror, and refugee crises throughout the Western hemisphere . . . This expert account makes the high cost of America’s thirst for guns crystal clear." - Publishers Weekly, starred review"Blood Gun Money is a solid account that offers a fresh perspective on an issue that has significant domestic and international ramifications." - Bookbrowse"Written in a gripping narrative style and with details glea