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Lies used for more
restrictive gun control in the U.S.
The 90 Percent Lie: While 90 percent of the guns traced to the U.S. actually originated in the
United States, the percent traced to the U.S. is only about 17 percent of
the total number of guns reaching Mexico. Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come
From U.S. The predominant source of guns in Mexico is Central and South
America. You also have Russian, Chinese and Israeli guns.
You've heard on TV and radio, in
newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land:
90
percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.
-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to
Mexico City.
-- CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President
Obama.
-- California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: "It is
unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and
used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors ... come from the United
States."
-- William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of
Representatives that "there is more than enough evidence to indicate that
over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or
interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within
the United States."
There's just one problem with the 90 percent "statistic" IT IS
NOT TRUE.
In fact, it's not even close. The fact is, only 17 percent of guns found at
Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S.
What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the
statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, "is that over 90
percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S."
But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back
to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they
do not come from the U.S.
"Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make
it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to
weapons that have been in the U.S. market," Matt Allen, special agent of
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.
A Look at the Numbers
In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico
submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were
successfully traced -- and of those, 90 percent -- 5,114 to be exact,
according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover -- were found to have
come from the U.S.
But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000
guns were recovered at crime scenes.
In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never
submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that
could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of
the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.
So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of
sources:
-- The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation
grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket
launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.
-- Russian crime organizations. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as
Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs
and arms in Mexico.
- South America. During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug
trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal
Research Division report from the Library of Congress.
-- Asia. According to a 2006 Amnesty International Report, China has
provided arms to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chinese
assault weapons and Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico.
-- The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six
years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their
weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in
Belgium.
-- Guatemala. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants,
stolen cars, guns and drugs, including most of America's cocaine, along the
porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, La Hora, a Guatemalan
newspaper, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on
the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel
operating out of Ixcan, a border town.
'These Don't Come From El Paso'
Ed Head, a firearms instructor in Arizona who spent 24 years with the U.S.
Border Patrol, recently displayed an array of weapons considered "assault
rifles" that are similar to those recovered in Mexico, but are unavailable
for sale in the U.S.
"These kinds of guns -- the auto versions of these guns -- they are not
coming from El Paso," he said. "They are coming from other sources. They are
brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They
are being diverted from the military. But you don't get these guns from the
U.S."
Some guns, he said, "are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico,
by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S.
government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in
Mexico that way -- the fully auto versions -- they are not smuggled in
across the river."
Many of the fully automatic weapons that have been seized in Mexico cannot
be found in the U.S., but they are not uncommon in the Third World.
The Mexican government said it has seized 2,239 grenades in the last two
years -- but those grenades and the rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are
unavailable in U.S. gun shops. The ones used in an attack on the U.S.
Consulate in Monterrey in October and a TV station in January were made in
South Korea. Almost 70 similar grenades were seized in February in the
bottom of a truck entering Mexico from Guatemala.
"Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or
by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling
of semi-automatic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the
U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California," according
to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
Boatloads of Weapons
So why would the Mexican drug cartels, which last year grossed between $17
billion and $38 billion, bother buying single-shot rifles, and force
thousands of unknown "straw" buyers in the U.S. through a government
background check, when they can buy boatloads of fully automatic M-16s and
assault rifles from China, Israel or South Africa?
Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government,
says the drug cartels are using the Guatemalan border to move black market
weapons. Some are left over from the Central American wars the United States
helped fight; others, like the grenades and launchers, are South Korean,
Israeli and Spanish. Some were legally supplied to the Mexican government;
others were sold by corrupt military officers or officials.
The exaggeration of United States "responsibility" for the lawlessness in
Mexico extends even beyond the "90-percent" falsehood -- and some Second
Amendment activists believe it's designed to promote more restrictive
gun-control laws in the U.S.
In a remarkable claim, Auturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S.,
said Mexico seizes 2,000 guns a day from the United States -- 730,000 a
year. That's a far cry from the official statistic from the Mexican attorney
general's office, which says Mexico seized 29,000 weapons in all of 2007 and
2008.
Chris Cox, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, blames the media
and anti-gun politicians in the U.S. for misrepresenting where Mexican
weapons come from.
"Reporter after politician after news anchor just disregards the truth on
this," Cox said. "The numbers are intentionally used to weaken the Second
Amendment."
"The predominant source of guns in Mexico is Central and South America. You
also have Russian, Chinese and Israeli guns. It's estimated that over
100,000 soldiers deserted the army to work for the drug cartels, and that
ignores all the police. How many of them took their weapons with them?"
By William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott
FOXNews.com
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