Distorting, perhaps deliberately, a statistic provided during Congressional testimony by a deputy administrator for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Obama administration and anti-gun members of Congress are laboring to convince American citizens that an overwhelming majority of guns being used by Mexican cartels in their drug war are coming from this country.
But a Fox News investigation and other journalists – including my colleagues David Codrea and Kurt Hoffman – have all revealed that this campaign of gun demonization is based on a lie.
Sadly, when the smoke clears, the wrong people are probably going to get blamed for all of this. When William Hoover, ATF assistant director for Field Operations, told Congress that 90 percent of the guns about which Mexican authorities had made inquiries to his agency had been traced back to the United States, he was apparently not being precisely accurate.
According to Fox News, here’s what Hoover said before a Congressional committee: “...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.”
However, according to his prepared remarks, this is what Hoover’s statement said: “In fact, according to ATF’s National Tracing Center, 90 percent of the weapons that could be traced were determined to have originated from various sources within the U.S.”
There is a great deal of difference in the remark quoted by Fox and what is written in Hoover’s prepared statement.
Hoover’s written testimony never implied that 90 percent of all the guns being recovered by Mexican authorities from crime scenes are coming from America. It’s not fair to people at the ATF who put together those numbers, and it certainly isn’t fair to millions of American citizens who own the kinds of firearms that Feinstein, Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, or his boss would like to permanently ban.
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.
The gun traces to which Hoover was alluding, according to an ATF spokeswoman, hardly represent all of the guns being recovered at Mexican crime scenes. They amount to a fraction of those guns, according to the Fox News report and others, and that’s also what
Gun Week will be reporting in its next issue, under my byline.
Fox reporter William La Juenesse was on with KVI talk host Kirby Wilbur Thursday, April 2 noting that in 2007-2008, Mexico recovered some 29,000 guns at crime scenes, but only submitted inquiries about 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing, and about 6,000 of those firearms were successfully traced. Of those, 5,114 were found to have come from this country. That is the “90 percent” about which Hoover’s written statement dealt.
Reporter after politician after news anchor just disregards the truth on this. The numbers are intentionally used to weaken the Second Amendment. – NRA’s Chris Cox
As the 90 percent story begins to fall apart, watch people like Clinton, Feinstein and others – who never seem to be held accountable for their own gaffes – try to stick Hoover and ATF with this fiasco.
Meanwhile, a story appeared the other day in the
Tacoma News Tribune that I simply could not resist, about an accidental shooting involving a drunk woman who was playing with a pistol.
The report said she put the pistol to her head, pressed the trigger, and when nothing happened, she put a cartridge in the chamber, put the gun to her head a second time, and fatally shot herself.
Now, here’s something you will not see on the next episode of CSI: According to the newspaper, “the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s office will conduct an autopsy on the woman…and determine the manner of death.”
Yeah, like there’s a big mystery to be solved here!
Visit with my fellow Gun Rights Examiners:
Comments
Thank God we have investigative reporters like Dave Workman. Otherwise the truth would regularly evade us. It is essential that we get accurate information on gun issues. Otherwise the liberal media will feed us only propaganda.
Clearly what ever the actual number turns out to be, a very high percentage of the guns used by Mexican cartels come from the USA. This is neither surprising nor controversial. Nor does it take a rocket scientist to figure it out.
We are in need of strong policy reform when it comes to guns in general and assault weapons in particular. I hope Democrats and other good people will stand up to the gun lobby and the NRA and insist on a safe and sane gun control policy.
Whatever that policy may be, Mr. Progressive, it CANNOT restrict ownership and carry of firearms by reasonable citizens and will have more to do with more effectively policing exports and all borders.
"Common sense" is not very common these days and not every "good" person is really "good" to each other.
Progressive said: "Clearly what ever the actual number turns out to be, a very high percentage of the guns used by Mexican cartels come from the USA."
Uh, did you not read the article? Your sentence is obviously wrong. The remainder of your missive has no foundation.
To Portland Progressive Examiner:
The Mexican drug cartels are in the business of trafficking illegal narcotics that have been banned in the US and other countries for decades. Please explain how "strong policy reform when it comes to guns" in the US will prevent these cartels from obtaining weapons, when we have seen for years that the drug laws are not stopping them from bringing narcotics into the country.
Also, the full-auto machine guns, rocket launchers, grenades, and other such weaponry that is reported being used by the cartels is not the type of weaponry available at any gun store or gun show in the US for LEGAL purchase by civilians.
The only way a civilian in the US can legally own a machine gun is if it's properly registered with the ATF (which requires a lot more paperwork and background checks than the typical semi-auto gun purchase), and if it was manufactured and registered with the ATF before 1986. After the enactment of the Firearm Owner's Protection Act in 1986, civilian ownership or transfer of any fully-automatic weapon which was not registered by May 19, 1986 has been illegal.
So where do the cartels keep acquiring their full-auto machine guns, RPG's and grenades?
My guess would be the international black market. There is plenty of firepower to go around if you have enough money and don't care about what the law says. And no amount of laws passed by Congress and signed by any US President will convince illegal gun runners to stop doing what they do.
The only thing "strong policy reform when it comes to guns" would accomplish is leave law-abiding US citizens like you and me disarmed and defenseless, not to mention that it would go against a God-given right guaranteed by the Constitution. Yes, we have well trained police officers, but we cannot count on them to be everywhere at every time. And there is plenty of case law and legal precedent stating that police officers are not personal bodyguards, so they cannot be held responsible if they arrive too late to protect you from a gang of thugs breaking into your house.
I strongly suspect that those firearms being reported to BATFE by the Mexican authorities are ones confiscated from regula citizens who got them from friends or relatives working in the US. Sure, it's against Mexican law, but given their strict gun control policies you can't really blame folks for wanting some protection.
I'm betting that we seldom see any data on the serious hardware that gets captured, those machine guns, grenades, and rockets, as they obviously did not come from the US civilian market, but most probably either from the international black market or from official sales from the US government to Mexico where they were "lost" in shipment or "fell off the loading dock."
Interesting how our elected officials can be caught in an outright lie and just shrug and move on to the next tall tale. I'm old enough to remember when they'd at least act embarrassed for a day or two before trying to duck responsibility.
To the Portland Progressive Examiner you are an idiot...I don't like your exercise of free speech and your blatant ignorance of our Constitutional principles. I think anything you have to say should be heavily censored...I think this would be an adequate trade off for your safe and sane gun control...Rememeber, the police are only minutes away when seconds count.
Progressive said: "Clearly what ever the actual number turns out to be, a very high percentage of the guns used by Mexican cartels come from the USA. This is neither surprising nor controversial. Nor does it take a rocket scientist to figure it out.
We are in need of strong policy reform when it comes to guns in general and assault weapons in particular. I hope Democrats and other good people will stand up to the gun lobby and the NRA and insist on a safe and sane gun control policy."
If they don't get them from the USA, they'll get them from somewhere else. GUN CONTROL LAWS DO NOT WORK,...FACT!! All your stupid gun control laws only serve to hurt LAW ABIDING citizens. What part of Law and Law Abiding can you not put together to understand that criminals are exactly the opposite. They don't follow the law. Stop shoving your control tactics down our throats in an attempt to take away our rights. You people are illogical and downright ignorant.
An ATF agent had remarked on another web site that the guns being traced back to the US are from the law enforcement aid sent to Mexico, They are machine gun type arms that corrupt cops, officials are selling out the back door to the cartels. They are not allowed to say that publicly or they lose their job, but if asked that directly they can say so without retribution.
I think we should run ALL anti gun idiots out of the country or just simply shoot them. I'm sick of them and thier never ending attempts to disarm us. That will be the criteria on selecting which ones to shoot. Just ask them if they supported gun laws and if they did...pow.
Fireye, what you are suggesting, or insinuating, is flatly WRONG. Stand down immediately. Among the values we cherish is tolerance for different opinion. And sometimes, those opinions even include unconstitutional thoughts and efforts. I am sick of the constant attacks on our rights, too. But we defeat them with truth, with education, and law, not in the way you suggest. Again, stand down with that idea.
It has been suggested that Portland Progressive Examiner is ignorant. I beg to differ.
He is not ignorant. He is evil and cowardly.
Quit promoting him to ignorance. He ain't nearly that nice.
Oh-baa-aaa-aaa-maa! Change we can believe in....NOT. Bwahahahaha!!!! Fools.
regarding Mr. Workman's observation that "There is a great deal of difference in the remark quoted by Fox and what is written in Hoover’s prepared statement":
OF COURSE there is a difference. Fox is quoting from Asst. Dir. Hoover's February 2008 statement to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, whereas the prepared statement referenced by Mr. Workman is from Asst. Dir. Hoover's March 2009 statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Hopefully Mr. Workman will review Asst. Dir. Hoover's 2008 statement (in which he clearly states 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") before repeating this gaffe in GunWeek.
I am so tired of talk about assault weapons. It is misleading to group all military looking firearms and call them assault weapons. Face it, the only assault weapons the average citizen can purchase is a semi-automatic, just like your typical semi-automatic deer rifle. It fires only one shot when the trigger is pulled. We already have controls on full military versions including full-automatic assault weapons. You cannot lump them all together. It is the way a gun functions that matters, not how it looks. Ignorant news media love to talk about assault weapons, but they really seem to be ignorant of what that includes. It is like saying ban all 4 wheel drive vehicles because some are military armored hum-Vee's. It is rediculous.
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