Exit Wounds: How America's Guns Fuel Violence across the Border

by Ieva Jusionyte

*Winner of the 2025 Juan E. Méndez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America*

Turns the familiar story of trafficking across the US-Mexico border on its head, looking at firearms smuggled south from the United States to Mexico and their ricochet effects.
 
American guns have entangled the lives of people on both sides of the US-Mexico border in a vicious circle of violence. After treating wounded migrants and refugees seeking safety in the United States, anthropologist Ieva Jusionyte boldly embarked on a journey in the opposite direction—following the guns from dealers in Arizona and Texas to crime scenes in Mexico.
 
An expert work of narrative nonfiction, Exit Wounds provides a rare, intimate look into the world of firearms trafficking and urges us to understand the effects of lax US gun laws abroad. Jusionyte masterfully weaves together the gripping stories of people who live and work with guns north and south of the a Mexican businessman who smuggles guns for protection, a teenage girl turned trained assassin, two US federal agents trying to stop gun traffickers, and a journalist who risks his life to report on organized crime. Based on years of fieldwork, Exit Wounds expands current debates about guns in America, grappling with US complicity in violence on both sides of the border.

Genres: Nonfiction, Anthropology, History, Sociology

347 pages, Hardcover

Published April 16, 2024

About the author

Ieva Jusionyte is an anthropologist, writer, and professor at Brown University, where she teaches about law, violence, and ethnographic research methods. She has published several award-winning books, and her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. In 2025, Jusionyte was named a MacArthur Fellow.

Learn more at www.ievajusionyte.com and follow her on Instagram (@ievajusionyte).

Reviews

[Debbie Cole]

I wish anti- gun control, "build the wall right wing nut jobs would get off Fox News and read this book. The flow of guns from our country is fueling the flow of immigrants TO our country.

[Andrew Paxman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone wanting to understand the homicide epidemic of the last fifteen or so years afflicting Mexico - and the role of the USA in perpetuating it - would do very well to start here. A most instructive, immersive, and elegantly-written account of Mexican violence.

Full review to come in the journal Mexican Studies.

[Sam Butcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Giabaldwin recommended this and I am glad she did. We hear a lot about drugs and illegal immigrants moving north across the border with Mexico but we seldom hear of the gun smuggling going south. Exit Wounds includes a lot of in-depth interviews and analysis with folks intimately involved with the “industry” of gun smuggling looking at the means and motivations of all of these players. I found Exit Wounds as objective as a book like this good be so kudos to the author for showing restraint.

[Mantas Tamulevičius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tai antra Ievos Jusionytės knyga, kurią perskaičiau, pirmoji– „Slenkstis“, išversta ir į lietuvių kalbą– buvo gan glaudžiai susijusi, bet visgi kitokia. Jeigu knygoje „Slenkstis“ apie ugniagesių gelbėtojų ir paramedikų darbą JAV-Meksikos pasienyje autorė su tyrimo metu surinkta medžiaga jungė ir savo asmeninius išgyvenimus, nes pati tarnavo paramedike Arizonos pasienio mieste Nogalese, tai šįkart jos asmeninę patirtį keičia pokalbiai su asmenimis, nelegaliai perkančiais ginklus, federaliniais agentais, tiriančiais ginklų kontrabandą, ir net mergina, kuri vos keturiolikos metų tapo vienos žiauriausių Meksikos kriminalinių grupuočių – Los Zetas – smogike.

Knyga puiki tiek kaip būdas susipažinti su tragiška Meksikos kasdienybe, tiek su JAV ginklų pramonės dydžiu ir įtaka (10 mln. pagaminamų ginklų per metus, ar tu juokauji?), su biurokratinėmis kliūtimis, neleidžiančiomis efektyviai tirti ginkluotės kontrabandos problemų ir galų gale su asmeninėmis istorijomis, kaip milžiniški smurto mastai atsiliepia kasdieniam gyvenimui.

Jeigu skaitėte (o net jei ir neskaitėte) autorės knygą „Slenkstis“, ši bus šaunus, bet šokiruojantis pratęsimas.

P.S. šioje knygoje labai pozityviai nustebino vaizdingas rašymo stilius. Ir skaitant paskutinį skyrelį, kur Ieva Jusionytė paaiškino tyrimo ir rašymo metodus, autorė paminėjo, kad šiam darbui ruošėsi ne tik lankydama šaudymo kursus, krav maga treniruotes (jeigu dirbant Meksikoje kas nors grasintų ginklu) ir t. t., bet ir skaitydama tokių autorių kaip Melchor, McCarthy ar Herrera prozą – ir skaitant tikrai nesunku tai pajusti.

[ASC Library]

363.33 Jus

[Cd]

one of those things i wish i'd done myself and not just because it wasn't good

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helps with understanding a lot of America's foreign policy errors over the past century tbh.