In the recent debate about stricter gun control, some officials on both sides of the Rio Grande saw a sliver of hope — that such laws might curb the flow of illegal weapons over the United States’ southern border.

“I hope that whatever we are going to do in trying to protect our gun rights but at the same time regulate the legal ownership of weapons is going to have a component on guns that are being smuggled out of the country so easily now and causing the carnage,” said Alonzo Peña, the former deputy director of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement who also served as a Department of Homeland Security attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.

But the national debate, coupled with the Obama administration’s proposals to tighten gun laws, has only fortified the ranks of Second Amendment proponents in Texas, who remain adamant that the border states that are a main source for weapons in Mexico’s drug war are not responsible for the thousands of murders in that country since 2006.

via Gun Control Debate Takes Mexico Into Account | The Texas Tribune.