BATTLE AGAINST MEXICAN CARTELS PUTS ARIZONA IN THE CROSS HAIRS

PHOENIX - X-Caliber, a gun store in a nondescript neighborhood in
this city's northern section, has become embroiled in Mexico's
turmoil. The chaos there is the result of the Mexican government's
decision to wage war against rampant drug cartels that are fighting
mostly against each other but also against the portions of Mexican
law enforcement they have not corrupted. Operating in that nation's
north, they are serving this nation's appetite for illegal narcotics
and illegal immigrants.

The gun shop's proprietor, the name of whose shop might indicate
familiarity with Arthurian legend, is on trial here, accused of
selling at least 650 weapons, including AK-47 rifles, in small lots
to "straw buyers" - people who illegally pass the weapons on to the
cartels, thereby fueling the violence that killed more than 6,000
Mexicans last year. That was more than 2,000 above the 2007 toll and
fewer than will die if the rate of killing so far this year
continues. (U.S. military fatalities in Iraq in six years number
4,249.) Fortunately, most of the fatalities are members of the warring cartels.

The prosecution of the proprietor is part of the U.S. attempt to stop
the southward flow of weapons and bulk currency while Mexico combats
the northward flow of drugs and of human beings brought by "coyotes."
But although almost all the cartels' weapons come from the United
States, the cartels are generating upward of $15 billion annually
from drugs, human trafficking and extortion. So they will find ways
to get guns - and grenades and other military weapons - for their
internecine disputes about control over routes for smuggling drugs and people.

When Gen. Michael Hayden stepped down as CIA director, he listed
Mexico among America's biggest national security concerns. But even
allowing for the stresses arising from the global economic downturn,
speculation that Mexico, with the world's 13th-largest economy, is
sinking toward the status of a "failed state" is far-fetched, as is
the idea that the cartels can withstand a determined drive by the
Mexican military, assisted by U.S. military technologies.

The turmoil is, however, taking a toll on Arizona, which has a
370-mile border with Mexico. Terry Goddard, Arizona's attorney
general, says this is a "transit state," not a "destination state."
Phoenix is a distribution center for smuggled drugs destined for more
than 230 American cities, and for people. Each commodity is stashed
in different "drop houses." The people are kept in what Goddard calls
"cattle-car conditions." He says that although a million people a
year are moving north through Arizona, it is still a seller's market
for traffickers in human beings.

Extrapolating from wire transfers of hundreds of millions of dollars
from customers in dozens of U.S. states to smugglers operating in
Arizona, Goddard believes that the "coyotes" who bring in the human
contraband are extremely violent extensions of the cartels. One gang
will swoop down on a "drop house" holding smuggled persons, or on a
truck carrying such persons on the interstate from Tucson, and then
"negotiate" their own deals with people who thought they had already
paid for the smuggling. Some who object are shot in the head, which
is, Goddard says, "a pretty good technique" for encouraging payments
from the others. He estimates that half of Phoenix's 169 murders last
year were related to human and drug smuggling.

Mexico, he says, is no longer importing up to four times more
pseudoephedrine than its pharmaceutical industry requires. This
ingredient was used to make methamphetamines destined for the U.S.
market. Today, measured by volume (millions of pounds) and profit (up
to 70 percent of the cartels' earnings), the biggest business is
still marijuana. It is shipped in 2-ton lots, in trucks that cross
over the border fence without touching it, using "bridges" that can
be assembled in 90 seconds at places identified by spotters who are
equipped to live in the desert for weeks at a time. They can report
where U.S. border patrols are at any moment.

All this has rekindled the debate - a hardy perennial - about
crimping the cartels' marijuana market by legalizing their product in
the United States. Whatever the merits of legalization - and there
are certain to be costs - it will not happen in the foreseeable
future, which is where Arizonans must live.

There are more than 6,600 licensed American gun dealers on the
2,000-mile border with Mexico. They should obey the law, even though
most of the victims of the cartels' violence deserve their fate.