What percentage of Mexican 'crime guns' are 'gunwalked' by Obama administration?

For years now, advocates of yet more restrictive regulation of private gun ownership in the U.S. have tried to use violent crime in Mexico to justify their demands for more infringements on that which shall not be infringed. One might think that the combination of Mexico's extremely draconian gun laws, and the rampant violence there, would demonstrate that restrictive gun laws are not the way to combat "gun violence." Instead, though, they claim that the Mexican drug syndicates responsible for the vast majority of the violence get their guns from the commercial market in the U.S., so that if our laws were more strict, the drug traffickers would run out of guns, and Mexico would be a "gun-free" paradise.

In support of this contention, they toss around percentages of recovered "crime guns" in Mexico, that supposedly came from the U.S. civilian market. Very high percentages, naturally. At one time, the claim was that "95 to 100 percent," or sometimes "more than 90%," of the guns used by drug cartel gunmen came from American gun shops and gun shows. They eventually backed off to "80 percent"--and we've shown that percentage to be utterly useless, because it's actually claiming that "80 percent" of the guns successfully traced come from the U.S., and we're given almost no clue as to what percentage of recovered "crime guns" are successfully traced.

We do know that it's not very high. About two years ago, we saw that Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)--no friend to gun owners--admitted in the Boston Globe that only one in four guns seized in Mexico were even submitted for tracing (and we don't know how many of those were not successfully traced):

Only about one out of every four weapons seized by Mexican authorities last year was submitted to the ATF so they could be traced back to purchasers and sellers in the United States.

That was two years ago, of course, and a great deal of money has been poured since then into beefing up the presence of the Burea of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) at and near the border (both north and south of it). That extra money doesn't seem to have bought us much. From another Boston Globe article:

For example, 44 percent of the 1,518 request in 2005 were successful, but only 31 percent of 21,726 requests in 2009 were successful.

And that "31 percent" is of guns that the BATFE attempted to trace--we have no idea how many were recovered, but not even submitted for tracing, because they were obviously not from the American civilian market. Wikileaks reveals that the drug syndicates' real firepower comes from somewhere else entirely. From the Latin American Herald Tribune:

Yet one of the cables maintains that 90 percent of the heavy armament Mexican security forces seize from cartel gunmen comes from Central America.

Keep in mind also that as we discussed in February, even a study partially funded by the rabidly anti-gun Joyce Foundation seems to indicate only a trickle of U.S. guns crossing the border. From the Center for Public Integrity:

Reports from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) show that over the last four years, more than 500 of the WASR-10s imported into the United States by Century were recovered in Mexico after being purchased in the United States. That is the most of any rifle or pistol purchased, recovered and traced during that four-year span, accounting for more than 17% of the total guns recovered, the reports show.

If 500 guns represents 17% of the total, that total is fewer than 3,000--over four years. Granted, the claim is "more than 500," but then again, that supposedly constitutes "more than 17%," so it seems safe to assume that the "more thans" cancel each other out. Let's be generous, though, and say it's 600 guns, representing exactly 17% of the total. Even then, the total would only be 3,530--again, over four years.

Now, compare that total to the 2-3,000 guns (that we know of so far) that the BATFE has "walked" to Mexico--in two years or less--and one starts to see that the BATFE could be looked at as one of the leading gun suppliers to the Mexican narco-thugs.

Now why would they do that, do you suppose? "Never let a serious crisis go to waste," Rahm?

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Hitting the big time: National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea and Sipsey Street Irregular Mike Vanderboegh received some well-deserved recognition from Michelle Malkin last night, for their work in bringing the "Project Gunwalker" scandal into the light, when she was a guest on Sean Hannity's Fox News program. Way to go, guys.