抖阴ap

MEXICO CITY — U.S. and Mexican officials are just now fully employing a gun- tracing program touted as a key deterrent to weapons smuggling, nearly three years after it was first announced in Mexico.

Not enough Mexican investigators had been trained on or had access to the electronic database designed to trace illegally seized weapons to origins in the U.S., a top official at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Wednesday.

ATF deputy director Kenneth Melson and Mexico Attorney General Arturo Chavez Chavez signed a memorandum of understanding on Tuesday that will increase to 30 a month the number of people trained to use the program.