AK-47 favorite gun of cartels

WASHINGTON — Convicted gun smuggler John Phillip Hernandez of Houston was likely not the kind of customer that Bushmaster Firearms International had in mind when he purchased 14 of the company's .223 caliber AR-15s at Houston area gun shops in 2006 and 2007.

Bushmaster describes the AR-15 rifle, a civilian version of the U.S. military's standard-issue M-16, as intended "for law enforcement, security and private consumer use." But the weapons that Hernandez and his associates purchased ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartel pistoleros, including the Bushmaster .223 that was later used to kill four police officers and three secretaries in Acapulco.

A Hearst Newspapers survey of 1,600 guns purchased mostly in Texas and Arizona — which were either shipped to Mexico or intercepted en route — shows the Bushmaster .223 AR-15 ranks second among firearms apparently used in drug warfare.

The survey — drawn from guns identified by manufacturer or importer in U.S. court documents from 44 cases involving 165 defendants in Texas, Arizona and three other states — shows the purveyors of guns to Mexican drug traffickers followed a time-honored maxim of product salesmanship: Bigger is definitely better.

In the world of assault-type weaponry, power is measured by bullet caliber, velocity and range, as well rapidity of fire and ammunition magazine capacity.

"The gun traffickers supplying Mexican drug organizations have become more selective and sophisticated in the weapons they acquire,"' said Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Washington-based Violence Policy Center, which extensively studied the issue. "Their goal is the bulk purchase of maximum firepower."

The Bushmaster .223 comes with a 30-round magazine, enabling the shooter to fire all 30 rounds, one for each pull of the trigger, in a minute or less. John Allen Muhammad, the D.C. sniper, and his youthful accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, used a Bushmaster .223 in nine of 10 sniper-style murders that terrorized the Washington area in 2002.

A spokeswoman for Bushmaster did not respond to repeated calls for comment.

The No. 1 gun in the Hearst survey was the AK-47 imported from Romania by Century International Arms of Delray Beach, Fla. Century Arms, as it's commonly known, legally circumvents a federal law stipulating that imported rifles must be suitable for "sporting purposes." Once inside the U.S., Century Arms converts the rifles into military-style AK-47s capable of holding 30-round magazines.