"Traces the deadly pipeline of assault weapons into the hands of organized crime."―Rolling Stone
MacArthur "Genius" Fellow Ieva Jusionyte turns the familiar border narrative upside down, following American guns as they move south into Mexico—and revealing how their violence ricochets back across the border.
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 border: 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.
Ieva Jusionyte is an anthropologist and associate professor at Brown University. A former paramedic and Harvard Radcliffe and Fulbright fellow, she is the author of the award-winning Threshold: Emergency Responders on the US-Mexico Border.
"The wound resulting from the flow of weapons from the US into Mexico reaches our societies' furthest nerve endings. Ieva Jusionyte explores this wound with mind-blowing courage and the most incisive scalpel. She writes with Didion-like poise, observational power, precision, and intelligence."—Francisco Goldman, author of Monkey Boy
"Jusionyte investigates in archives, hospitals, prisons, and dark alleys; she interviews victims and criminals (operating both within and outside the law) to present evidence that the arms traffic that goes parallel to the 'war on drugs' is not a flaw or an accident but both a system of control and a business. Here it is, in black and white, the explanation for the United States gunwalking operation that contemplates the tragedy of the Mexican people not as a problem but as an acceptable outcome. Exit Wounds is as relevant as a book can be; it sheds light on mechanisms at the core of our daily catastrophe."—Yuri Herrera, author of Signs Preceding the End of the World
"In this absolutely riveting account, Jusionyte follows US guns south across the border to uncover the stories of the people who buy, smuggle, use, seize, and sometimes even recycle them. Brilliantly told and bravely researched, Exit Wounds shows the full devastation of this flood of American-made steel—not only for the hundreds of thousands of people left dead, maimed, or missing but also for families, communities, and Mexican society."—Peter Andreas, author of Border Games: The Politics of Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide
"A remarkable and chilling book. Jusionyte writes with urgency, brilliance, and grace."—Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of She's Not There and co-author with Jodi Picoult of Mad Honey
"Jusionyte directs our eyes beyond the pervasive political rhetoric about walls, razor wire, and buoys in the Rio Grande to the hidden world of gun smuggling. Heartbreaking, sobering, and troubling, Exit Wounds is an urgent call to those who want to fully understand the complexities and synergy between the United States and Mexico. Superbly written and impeccably researched, this book is simply exceptional."—Alfredo Corchado, Mexico-border correspondent for the Dallas Morning News and author of Midnight in Mexico
"Exit Wounds is a harrowing, intimate, and profoundly illuminating journey through the asymmetrical exchanges of guns, drugs, money, people, and the stories about them that together constitute the all-American borderlands between the United States and Mexico. Humanizing a host of urgent social issues, this is a vital book for our times."—Lucas Bessire, author of Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains
"Compelling, disturbing, and powerful."—Jason De León, author of Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling
350 pp.6 x 9Illus: 1 map
9780520419308$24.95|£21.00Paper
Apr 2025