Cowboy Confessional

Today the Associated Press, an outlet not known for accuracy, echoes a government report about how often the Mexican government asks if a firearm they came from theUnited States.

Which, of course, is meaningless.

Barack Obama’s failed attempts to ratify gun control treaties such as CIFTA requires presenting a problem. Despite Obama’s staff smuggling guns to Mexico, Americans realize that the real problem is with drug lords and perhaps even anti-drug laws – not a small number of firearms migrating south (from this report, about one firearm for every 8,400 Mexicans). Hence Obama’s BATFE, the same organization at the heart of federal (and illegal) gun running operations, dumped some raw and insufficient data into the media maelstrom in an attempt to generate some old fashioned hysteria.

We see how well that worked for Al Gore.

Here is the problem. The Mexican government (a.k.a. the failed state) occasionally asks the BATFE to trace serial numbers on some firearms that Mexico confiscates, be they taken from drug lords or citizens attempting to protect themselves from drug lords. This smallish sample is in no way reflective of the arms that drug cartels collect. Worse still is that trace data – in the latest report spanning five years – doesn’t answer some very basic questions:

• What is the total number of firearms confiscated by Mexican authorities? This report only discusses the ones in which a trace was requested. Are U.S.guns 10% of all those collected or 0.01%?
• Of the ones not traced, where did they come from?  A lot of surplus revolutionary firearms are coming fromSouth America.
• What is the age of these firearms? Were they bought in theU.S.last week or fifty years ago?
•  How many were supplied by theU.S.government, either as police/military support or via Fast and Furious type operations?
•  How many firearms have been non-confiscated?  InMexicothere is a large overlap between the authorities and drug cartels, so we need to know if a large part of the violence problem is being concealed?
• Were the confiscated firearm even used criminally? Frankly, any otherwise law abiding Mexican citizen with a gun should be presented a freedom medal and their firearm counted as a homeland defense tool.

Sadly the AP does not (perhaps will not) report on these questions. It is our job to do their job – to keep asking.

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This entry was posted by Guy Smith on Friday, April 27th, 2012 at 8:17 am and is filed under Gun control, International, Propaganda. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.