Mexico guns – the 90 percent lie continues

Just today, I’ve now heard the “90 percent of the seized weapons in Mexico came from the United States’ outright lie three times today. Three times.

I do not have the ability to record video, and do not have the time to edit it down either, but this morning at about 7 a.m. ET, WFSB Channel 3 in Hartford went to a “shared” reporter who used the 90 percent statistic. I screamed at the TV.

Then Bob Beckel – on Fox News during America’s Newsroom – tossed out the same 90 percent lie. I screamed at the TV.

Let me point out that I’ve watched a total of five minutes of TV today, so seeing the 90 percent lie must be some sort of divine intervention – hence this post.

Now, Morrissey over at Hot Air picked up the story from today’s Washington Post.

The financial sanctions provide an additional tool against the organizations, whose drug and gun trafficking has proved exceedingly difficult to curtail. Mexico, for example, has seized more than 35,000 firearms from narco-traffickers since December 2006, and both governments say 90 percent of the weapons originated in the United States.

Look, it’s a lie. More from Ed; and Jim covered on the show and here on April 2 – two weeks ago.

The ATF correctly states that of the guns that can be successfully traced by the ATF or FBI from the guns sent to them by Mexican authorities, about 90% have origins in the US.  However, Mexico doesn’t send all of the guns that they capture to the US for tracing; only about a third of them get sent here.  Of that third, roughly half can’t be traced at all, thanks to efforts to strip the weapons of registration markings.  With the other half, about nine of ten can be traced to the US, which works out to about 17% of all weapons seized by Mexican officials.

Let me be perfectly clear. I do not want any weapons to be transferred to Mexico illegally. None. I don’t want criminals to have any guns, but taking the rights away from honest, law-abiding Americans will not take one gun out of the hands of a criminal, here or in Mexico. Not one.