Gun smuggling increases

FROM STAFF AND AP REPORTS

December 28, 2007 - 6:20PM

The number and sophistication of automatic weapons being smuggled into Mexico has increased greatly in recent months, a trend that in part pushed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to create a special office in Yuma.

The federal organization's temporary office quarters have been open for two months now and employ three agents, according to Tom Mangan, ATF special agent in Phoenix.

Mangan stressed that military-level weapons being smuggled into Mexico presents a major safety concern on both sides of the border.

Spread across a conference table at the ATF in Phoenix on one recent day were enough weapons to equip several car loads of drug runners.

''These are, quite frankly, weapons of war,'' ATF special agent Tom Mangan said as he picked up an assault rifle and examined it. "These are military-type weapons. This is firepower you would expect to see on the battlegrounds of Iraq and Afghanistan."

Agents said Thursday they found the 42 weapons in a storage locker about 10 days ago. The guns were worth $250,000 in all: Belgian-made ''FN'' handguns, semiautomatic AK-47 rifles and other pistols. They also found four olive boxes loaded with .50-caliber bullets - ammunition that's big enough to take out an airplane.