The Guns Of Calderon
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, April 17, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Weapons: Reporting on President Obama's visit to Mexico, the Washington Post parrots both governments' line that 90% of guns confiscated from the drug lords originate in the U.S. They're all shooting blanks.
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We've all heard the cliche about lies, damned lied and statistics. In political discourse, numbers put forth, such as of the homeless and uninsured, take on a life of their own, unquestioned and devoid of analysis or true meaning.
In the liberal circles of the mainstream media and the current administration, not to be redundant, the example du jour was in the Post's coverage Thursday of President Obama's visit to Mexico.
Post reporter Spencer Hsu told us that Mexico "has seized more than 35,000 firearms since December 2006, and both governments say 90% of the weapons originated in the U.S."
The only truth here is that both governments have repeated this falsehood as truth. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City. Mexican President Felipe Calderon said in an interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell that "most of the weapons, almost 16,000, are assault weapons and 90% of those were sold in the United States."
Well, both governments are wrong, and a little bit of investigative journalism would have unearthed that factoid. First, Mexico sends only one-third of the confiscated weapons to the U.S. for tracing. Of that third, many can't be traced due to efforts to remove registration markings.
Fox News has reported that according to William Newell, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Mexico sent about 11,000 guns in 2007-08 to America for tracing. Of that number, 6,000 were successfully traced. And of that number, only 5,114, or that famous 90%, were found to have originated in the U.S.
Do the math and you find that only 17% of the guns confiscated were actually traced to the U.S. So why are so few guns sent here for tracing? Because, as Matt Allen, a special agent with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, points out, weapons known not to be of American origin are not sent to the U.S. for tracing. Duh.
Allen said that "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."
Many weapons have been legitimately shipped to Mexico from the U.S. as part of our effort to assist the Mexican military and police in the drug war. About 150,000 Mexican soldiers have deserted in the past six years, taking their weapons with them.
A report in the London Daily Mail notes that many drug gangs employ ex-special forces soldiers recruited from the Mexican military. They are supported by corrupt police, with as many as 20% local law enforcement officers believed to be in the pay of drug gangs.
Ed Head, a firearms instructor in Arizona who spent 24 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, recently displayed an array of "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," Head told Fox News. "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."
The Mexican drug cartels gross an estimated $40 billion annually. They don't need to scour roadside American gun shows for their weapons. Neither do American politicians or the media need to fudge the numbers ? unless this is preparing the way to stricter gun control.
After all, as someone once said, never waste a good crisis.
