Rights watch: a red herring

Guns Magazine, August, 2009 by David Codrea

"US and Mexican officials report that, based on ATF tracing data, the cartels gel between 90 and 95 percent of their firearms from the United States."

This claim was made by Violence Policy Center Senior Policy Analyst Tom Diaz in his statement to a US House of Representatives subcommittee hearing on "Money, Guns, and Drugs: Are US Inputs Fueling Violence on the US/Mexico Border?"

His proposed solution'?

"Repeal the current restrictions on release of ATF crime gun trace data ... Implement an effective federal assault weapons ban ... Implement restrictions on 50-caliber sniper rifles ... [and] Extend the Brady background check system to the "secondary market."

"More than 90 percent of the guns used by the drug cartels originate from US gun sellers," the Brady Campaign claimed in its report "Exporting Gun Violence: How Our Weak Gun Laws Arm Criminals in Mexico and America."

"American gun sellers supply the cartels with 95 to 100 percent of their guns, according to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives," wrote Brady president Paul Helmke and board member Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in their CNN.com commentary "Stop flow of US guns to Mexico drug war."

"Approximately 90 percent of weapons used by cartels come from the United States," Senators Dianne Feinstein and Richard Durbin wrote to the Senate Committee to Take up Inter-American Convention against Illegal Arms Trafficking.

"Approximately 90 percent of weapons seized by the Mexican Government from Mexican drug cartels came into the country illegally from the United States," Feinstein wrote to President Barack Obama.

"It is estimated that at least 90 percent of the guns used by the Mexican drug trafficking organizations have come from the US," Matthew Price of BBC News dutifully parroted to his readers.

"The US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) reports that more than 90 percent of guns recovered in Mexico are traced back to the US," repeated The Christian Science Monitor.

There's only one problem: Introduce an oath into the mix and the story changes.

"According to ATF's Tracing Center, 90 percent of the firearms about which ATF receives information are traceable to the United States," Deputy Attorney General David Ogden told the Senate Subcommittee on Homeland Security.

That's very different. It turns out to mean "only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the US," Fox News tells us, because "a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the US for tracing."

It would take another column to even scratch the surface on the military-grade weapons coming into Mexico from Central America, former Soviet bloc manufacturers, Asia ... and yet another to analyze approved US government arms shipments ... and another still to highlight Mexico's pervasive official corruption.

Let us instead confront Mr. Diaz with the facts to refute a claim he stated as cause to impose more infringements on out right to keep and bear arms. Again, from Fox News:

"Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, called the '90 percent' issue a red herring and said that it should not detract from the effort to stop gun trafficking into Mexico.

This guy's unbelievable.

Visit David Codrea's online journal The War on Guns at waronguns.blogspot.com.