MSNBC Touts Disputed Liberal Talking Point That 90% of Mexico Guns May Come from U.S.

Newsbusters.org ^ | 9/5/2021 | Brad Wilmouth

[The Antiyuppie]

What if it IS true. So what? I’ll bet 98%+ of our “undocumented immigration”comes from Mexico. We should make it illegal.

Oh, wait…

[monkeyshine]

I have no idea if this is true, but it seems absurd on its face since nearly every country on earth that has people who wish to engage in strife seems plenty able to obtain weapons.

And it is total misdirection. How many tens of thousands of American die each year from Meth and Fentanyl that is smuggled in from Mexico? How many Americans are murdered by other Americans every year from drug turf wars and related crimes?

I hate the American news media. They are *censored*

[x]

We still make guns. So many other industries have been gutted. But I'm sure that other great powers also make guns.

This kind of suit started in the US, didn't it? And now it comes back to bite us in our own backyard. Another unintended consequence of global Americanization.

[Do_Tar]

IIRC the 90% figure was a meaningless number.
It was 90% of the guns that they thought were from the US were actually from the US. It was never tied to total weapons found.

[10mm]

Lying with Statistics 101. Virtual all illegal firearms in Mexico are un-serialized and can't be traced. All US-manufactured guns have serial numbers. Of those guns with serial numbers, 90% come from the US.

Translation: 90% of traceable guns come from the US, because US guns have traceable serial numbers. The overwhelming majority do not.

[TigersEye]

Mexico's Gun Supply and the 90 Percent Myth

As we discussed in a previous analysis, the 90 percent number was derived from a June 2009 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report to Congress on U.S. efforts to combat arms trafficking to Mexico (see external link).

According to the GAO report, some 30,000 firearms were seized from criminals by Mexican authorities in 2008. Of these 30,000 firearms, information pertaining to 7,200 of them (24 percent) was submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for tracing. Of these 7,200 guns, only about 4,000 could be traced by the ATF, and of these 4,000, some 3,480 (87 percent) were shown to have come from the United States.

This means that the 87 percent figure relates to the number of weapons submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF that could be successfully traced are not from the total number of weapons seized by Mexican authorities or even from the total number of weapons submitted to the ATF for tracing. In fact, the 3,480 guns positively traced to the United States equals less than 12 percent of the total arms seized in Mexico in 2008 and less than 48 percent of all those submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF for tracing. This means that almost 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico in 2008 were not traced back to the United States.

[Lurkinanloomin]

We left 600,000 in Afghanistan for the Taliban to sell to whoever they want.

[joma89]

Given to them by the democrat taliban party.

[South Dakota]

I’m betting the weapons sold in Mexico were stolen in the US

[DoughtyOne]

Yeah, Mexico...

Afghanistan: Crickets

[Who is John Galt?]

IIRC the 90% figure was a meaningless number.
It was 90% of the guns that they thought were from the US were actually from the US. It was never tied to total weapons found.

Exactly right! The article states:

An estimated 200,000 firearms are illegally trafficked from the U.S. to Mexico every year and between 70 percent and 90 percent of the firearms found at crime scenes in Mexico are traced right back here.

Two points:
1] the "estimated 200,000 firearms" is quite likely a politically-motivated "wild @ss guess"; and
2] law enforcement does NOT attempt to trace 100% of guns found at crime scenes, even here in the US; in Mexico, they might attempt to trace unusual firearms, that were likely brought in by small-scale "Fast & Furious" type smugglers, but Mexican LEOs do not even try to trace the vast majority of guns used in crimes.

In other words, 70-90% of some tiny minority of crime guns might be traced to US sources, but NOT 70-90% of ALL guns used by Mexican criminals. Just more phony numbers being pushed by "fake newsers" to promote their favorite D@mocrat Party objectives...

[Scrambler Bob]

Fact is, the cartels (major purchasers of arms within Mexico) can get a much better deal by acquiring arms from the Chinese Communist regime
= = =

You mean they don’t get semi auto AKs in the US, and convert them to full auto?

As reported in the book El Narco.

[Shery]

Remember Fast & Furious? How many million guns did the Obama administration let go into Mexico?

[Texas resident]

Wait until the taliban starts selling those weapons to the Mexican cartels.

[SunkenCiv]

It used to be true, during Obama's Fast and Furious... /rimshot

Partisan Media Shill alert.

[jonrick46]

U.S. arms manufactures sell guns to the Mexican police departments. The police are underfunded so they sell their guns to the drug cartels. The drug cartels supplies the weapons to the U.S. drug gangs.