Some journalists won't admit truth about Mexican 'crime gun' numbers

May 24, 11:24 AMGun Rights ExaminerDavid Codrea

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(AP Photo/Guillermo Arias)

Readers who have been following my series on how Mexican crime is being exploited to promote more "gun control" edicts have been led step-by-step through the web of lies and corruption. I will recap for those just joining us:

• What does 'Operation Southbound Steel' tell us about smuggling U.S. guns to Mexico?
• Do 90% of Mexican 'crime guns' come from U.S.?
• We're being lied to about U.S. guns and Mexican cartels. Why?
• Do U.S. government arms exports play a part in arming Mexican cartels?
• Exposing lies about U.S. guns and Mexican crime
• Mexican warehouse exposes gun grabber cartel lies
• The Mexican 'dog and pony show' on guns
• U.S. 'gun control' not the answer to Mexican crime
• Mexican prison break shows deeper problems than U.S. guns
• More 'gun control' won't stop drug war corruption and violence

Having bothered to, you know, independently study and document this situation, I'll not give a pass when I see some shallow dilettante of an "authorized journalist" treat the matter with cavalier snark. Meet Todd Robberson (!), "Editorial Writer" for The Dallas Morning News:

I guess it wasn't enough for the gun lobby that they successfully cowed Congress into submission and won approval (in a rider to a credit-card reform bill) for people to carry assault weapons into national parks. They now believe that the Mexicans are lying when they report that 90 percent of guns seized from Mexican drug cartels are traceable to U.S. sellers.

Yes, Todd, and with you being a "professional" journalist, and with much of this happening in your own back yard, for you not to know they are lying shows your "work" product to be either ignorant and lazy, or else...well. what other reasons could there be? That you do this for a major newspaper with the intent of affecting political opinions, and thus decisions, is--at best--inexcusably irresponsible.

It looks like my "at best" assumption is overly generous--this guy is a "true believer" of the first order:

The item I posted yesterday led to quite a response from readers, many of whom don't seem to understand the source of the "90 percent" figure cited for the weapons captured from the drug cartels. The source is the Mexican government, based on their actual capture statistics of traceable weapons from about 18,000 seized over the previous two years...

He's still trying to hang on to the last shred of credibility. He's so desperate to prove he knows what he's parroti...uh...talking about, he's even citing the Violence Policy Center. And he is, of course, completely missing the point--not that I think he really does, but he has to give the willfully deluded in his readership some bit of misdirection to hang on to.

Fortunately, the rest of the media seems to be waking up to what Todd refuses to. A Google "News" category search of the terms Mexico gun 90% reveals that, aside from an increasingly lonely and desperate opinion maker at The Dallas Morning News, their competition appears to be coming around to the truth.

From The Sun News:

The oft-repeated statistic that "more than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States" is not, in fact, what the government's records show.

From The Arizona Republic:

"The claim made by administration officials that 90 percent of the arms seized from the Mexican drug cartels came from the United States is not true," McCain said flatly.

From the El Paso Times:

More than 90 percent of about 11,000 guns tied to violence in Mexico's drug wars came from the United States, but those weapons were handpicked for tracing by Mexican authorities.

From Voice of America:

Initial claims that 90 percent of guns used by criminals in Mexico came from the United States turned out to be based on faulty data analysis.

What was Yul Brynner's line in The King and I? "Et cetera, et cetera..."

So I wonder if Robberson will finally come around, do the decent thing, and apologize to his readers? More likely, if he backs up an inch, it will be to "clarify" what he really meant, and then try to change the direction of the discussion by peppering us with more VPC "factoids."

And I wonder how that squares with what President and General Manager John McKeon meant when he spoke of "the value our readers place on the quality of our content" as he tried to explain away why his paper's circulation and profits have plummeted...?

NOTE: I'm aware that comments are being cut off. Tech support  has been notified, but I'm not sure if we'll see much progress toward a fix over the long weekend. Please take that under advisement and keep comments brief, otherwise they may get cut off in mid-sentence.