I figured out how to make solar panels work.

Get them to run on oil.

</end sarcasm>

It got weird, didn't it?

Mexico has been at war with its various drug cartels for some time.  Perhaps as a consequence of that fight, or perhaps simply in parallel, Mexico has been making it harder and harder to obtain guns there.  Not surprisingly guns have been walking south from the U.S. to Mexico.  Clearly Mexican demand, not entirely legally has been fulfilled by American supply.  That's the free market, albeit grey in this case.  The sellers are legally selling guns to buyers who are misrepresenting themselves as being able to legally purchase them.  None of this should surprise anyone.  You don't need to believe in the laws of supply and demand to see them in effect.  Regardless of government style in effect, supply and demand  are real, tangible things.  You need food, you buy it from where it is being sold.  That's irrespective of where you have to go to get it, and of what the commodity is - it works for guns as well as food.

That the guns are being used by a criminal element - buying the guns illegally and using them to violent, illegal effect - is also to be expected.  There is a drug war between rival drug gangs and also the Mexican authorities who are in the dubious position of being almost no more than just another faction.  It makes sense that they would ban guns in Mexico - it gives them a competitive advantage in the violence that plagues that nation.   The government doesn't have a brake on it's authority so it's natural that it would just go ahead and do that.  The drug cartels response - go get guns where they are readily available.  So far, no surprise.  But wait, it gets weird.