Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Friday launched an official campaign to overcome the number of weapons on the country's violent streets.
The plan, called “Disarmament Should Peace,” will offer money to those who drop off weapons anonymously at designated locations, including churches.
Gun owners will receive 8,700 pesos ($430) for a shotgun, 25,000 pesos ($1,200) for an AK-47 rifle and 26,450 pesos ($1,300) for a machine gun. The weapons are then to be destroyed.
The disarmament plan is part of the government's “overall strategy” to fight crime.
“Why do we have to teach our children anything about violence?” Sheinbaum said at the launch event, which included a symbolic destruction of weapons by soldiers.
Daniel Cardenas/Anadolu via Getty Images
Children who attended the event with their parents were able to trade in toy guns for other toys.
The scheme, which was first announced last month, was published in the country's official government gazette earlier this week.
It has been in Mexico City since 2019, but now it will be involved throughout the country, and will be carried out by the ministries of defense, interior and public safety, with the support of the religious authorities of Mexico .
Mexico is plagued by violent crime related to the multi-billion dollar illegal drug trade.
In 2023, the country recorded 31,062 murders, 70 percent of which were caused by firearms, according to preliminary data from the National Institute of Statistics.
Mexico tightly controls the sale of firearms, making them almost impossible to obtain legally, and has repeatedly urged Washington to crack down on the arms trade across the border from the United States.
An estimated 200,000 and a half million US firearms are imported into Mexico each year, “60 Minutes” reported last month. Mexico asked US attorney Jonathan Lowy to help cut off the gun pipeline, known as the “river of iron.”
“If you think fentanyl overdoses are a problem, if you think cross-border migration is a problem, if you think the spread of organized crime is a problem in the United States, you should be careful about stopping the criminal pipeline to Mexico,” Lowy told “60 Minutes” in December. “And you have to stop it at its source. Because all these problems are driven by the supply of US guns to the cartels.”
