90% of guns in Mexico are from the US?

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009...umber-claimed/

A Look at the Numbers In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced -- and of those, 90 percent -- 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover -- were found to have come from the U.S. But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes. 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. So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of sources: -- The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers. -- Russian crime organizations. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico. - South America. During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal Research Division report from the Library of Congress. -- Asia. According to a 2006 Amnesty International Report, China has provided arms to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chinese assault weapons and Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico. -- The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium. -- Guatemala. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants, stolen cars, guns and drugs, including most of America's cocaine, along the porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel operating out of Ixcan, a border town.

What? A Clinton lied?

*yawn*

Originally Posted by TieDyeGuy *yawn*

*fires a gun near TDG's ear*

That help?

You do realize this is their way of trying to start the gun ban. Make everyone think that the drug cartels are buying their hand grenades and rocket launchers at gun shops in the U.S. and try to get public support for a gun ban. Seriously, if the U.S. banned the sale of all weapons do people really think the drug cartels would just give up and start throwing rocks at each other.

I just like how, once again, statistics are being used by liars to further their cause.

90% of the people in my neighborhood are illegal aliens. Is that a fact or not. Who knows. I'd say 75% of them are Mexican though. 100% of the US population voted for my man Obobblehead - true or not???? Who knows. I don't believe statistics most of the time- people manipulate them and exaggerate them to strengthen their arguement - people are wising up to that these days.

Originally Posted by dmbsituation I just like how, once again, statistics are being used by liars to further their cause.

didn't you say in another thread that Statistics was your favorite class?

OK. 5,114 guns were traced back to the United States.

I want to know WHERE they came from and who purchased them? WHO were they traced TO?

How many of the guns were ones that were actually provided to the Mexican Military or Mexican Police? That is a number that I would like to see.

How many were purchased by the people that used them in their crimes?
How many of them were stolen in the United States and then travelled to Mexico via the black market.

If these guns made it to Mexico via any method other than legal purchase, how is banning more guns in the United States going to hurt anyone but law abiding citizens here?

Originally Posted by retrobruce If these guns made it to Mexico via any method other than legal purchase, how is banning more guns in the United States going to hurt anyone but law abiding citizens here?

Because law-abiding citizens are the only ones the laws affect. The criminals apparently don't give a rat's patootie. Maybe if the current laws were enforced, or if a bad law, then repealed, our representatives would not have to write new laws bearing their names and pontificate on why we need a new law. Maybe they could get back to trying to manage the country -- naw that would be asking too much.

Also, if all these weapons, especially the grenades and rocket launchers, are being legally purchased at gun shops, I would sure like to know where those gun shops are -- just saying -- I'd like to pick up some RPGs, just in case.

Well that's your free market for ya. If Mexican drug cartels want guns you can be damn certain there are plenty of Americans willing to meet that demand.

A minute is all the time that it takes for an employee in one of almost 7,000 gun shops dotting the U.S./Mexico border to accept a wad of cash from an eager customer, fill out a triplicate sales slip, and slide a nice, new Taurus .45 caliber pistol across the counter. Or two, or three, or twenty, as the case may be. Add those handguns to the countless tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of pistols, sniper and assault rifles, semi-automatic machine guns, shield-piercing bullets, grenades, plastic explosives, as well as anti-tank weapons outfitted with self-propelling rockets passing illegally through the hands of drug cartel foot soldiers and assassins. Throw in the array of weapons favored by DEA and CIA agents, Mexican federal police and military units, and other 'drug warriors,' of one sort or another. These are all people who are ready, willing, and able to use violence to get what they want. If it looks like you’ve got a battle on your hands, you do -- the Mexican drug war has hit boiling point. Mexican authorities have been quite vocal in the past year about the role that the U.S. is playing in the escalation of gun violence in Mexico. Last year, no less than 20,000 weapons were seized in drug-related actions, raids, arrests, and shoot-outs; nearly all of them were sold in the U.S. (The Mexican government has finally been given electronic access, by the U.S. Department of Justice, to be able to trace the origins of registered weapons, but only if they are used in the commission of crimes.) Last month, the U.S. government’s own Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, released its policy-shaping “2009 International Narcotics Strategy Report.” As the bureau had to admit, “U.S.-purchased or stolen firearms account for an estimated 95% of the Mexico’s drug-related killings.” Nowhere in the report was it emphasized, however, that there are at least 6,600 licensed gun dealers in the four states adjacent to the Mexico border. Or that legal loopholes grant thousands of other unlicensed gun "enthusiasts" and collectors across the country to sell their wares, without inspection or oversight, at weekend gun shows across the country. “A vast arms bazaar is rampant along the four border states, enabled by porous to nonexistent American gun laws,” The New York Times editorialized on February 27, 2009, after the indictment of George Iknadosian, a gun-shop owner facing federal charges for knowingly providing weapons to members of the Sinaloa cartel. ... In the international munitions and intelligence-gathering marketplace, the U.S. is the #1 supplier/dealer of arms, military transport, law-enforcement and detention equipment, surveillance technology, and “non-lethal” weaponry. ... For their part, television news networks ranging from FOX to CNN have set about creating a hysterical flutter of speculation about the likelihood of about teenage Latino “sleeper cells;” hypothetical collaborations between Hezbollah and drug cartels; the “nightmare scenario” of a crazed, drug-fueled invasion from Mexico; and the perceived need to militarize our border to new heights. None of this would seem to be of particular comfort to the people of Ciudad Juárez. They wouldn’t have much time to contemplate why CNN anchorman Don Lemon would take the time to argue with a Texan mayor about the “spillover effect” that the town of McAllen knows isn’t taking place; or why FOX News’ Geraldo Rivera turned to “terrorism expert” Bernard Kerik (disgraced Homeland Security nominee, former Taser-executive, and multiple felony-charged former NYC police commissioner), for his opinion on whether the U.S. federal agencies and military forces should be moving into Mexican territory to get the situation under control. (Although the connection was never made clear, Kerik and NYC comrade Rudy Giuliani were hired in Mexico City, several years ago, as high-level policing and counterterrorism preparedness consultants to the government.) ... http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter...g_the_country/

Originally Posted by LindaK Well that's your free market for ya. If Mexican drug cartels want guns you can be damn certain there are plenty of Americans willing to meet that demand.

semi-automatic machine guns?
No such thing.
Semi-automatic is NOT a machine gun.

If you are going to post something that perports to be somewhat factual, that wasn't it.

Grenades, plastic explosives and anti-tank weapons?
Aw come on. PLEASE.

Those are coming from U.S. gun shops?

Hardly.

As the bureau had to admit, “U.S.-purchased or stolen firearms account for an estimated 95% of the Mexico’s drug-related killings.”


Or stolen. Important words.
Restricting legal weapons to U.S. citizens won't have any effect on this. More feel good BS.


The 20,000 weapons number is clearly contridicted by numbers in a previous post.

Originally Posted by LindaK Well that's your free market for ya. If Mexican drug cartels want guns you can be damn certain there are plenty of Americans willing to meet that demand.

I'm not buying what that lady is selling. Considering what I posted states that often times people like her will leave out the fact that the 90+% is TRACEABLE firearms submitted to the US... And that the 90+% DOESN'T apply to all firearms used in crimes.

My guess is firearms legally sold in the US are traceable, while weapons made elsewhere often aren't. Sure, all the weapons that the US manufactures that end up in crimes are traceable. And of the traceable weapons collected, the US accounts for 90%. That doesn't mean that 90% of all weapons in Mexico are US firearms.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize many guns come from countries other than the U.S. Or is it too difficult for some people to think? Do many people even know where guns are manufactured?? How much arms trade there is in Russia, China and the like??

Originally Posted by dmbsituation I'm not buying what that lady is selling. Considering what I posted states that often times people like her will leave out the fact that the 90+% is TRACEABLE firearms submitted to the US... And that the 90+% DOESN'T apply to all firearms used in crimes. My guess is firearms legally sold in the US are traceable, while weapons made elsewhere often aren't. Sure, all the weapons that the US manufactures that end up in crimes are traceable. And of the traceable weapons collected, the US accounts for 90%. That doesn't mean that 90% of all weapons in Mexico are US firearms.

Of course it is not proof that 90% of all guns in Mexico are from the US -- just the traceable guns confiscated from crime scenes. What I find odd is that Conservatives don't want to believe their lying eyes on this one.

Originally Posted by LindaK Of course it is not proof that 90% of all guns in Mexico are from the US -- just the traceable guns confiscated from crime scenes. What I find odd is that Conservatives don't want to believe their lying eyes on this one.

Mexico is complaining because they can. The other untraceable firearms used and traceable from other countries (87% of arms found) won't get the anti-gun people in Mexico's closest and most powerful country riled up.

Another puppeteer for the the anti-gun people? What a surprise!