WaPo Reprises the "90% Lie", Whines for Selective, Ineffective BATF

The Washington Post rehashed the infamous and oft-debunked Mexican Gun Canard again this morning in a story they laughably call an "exclusive."

The only thing exclusive about this fabrication is that they are the only fools outside of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave still pushing it.

The foundation and the National Rifle Association aggressively challenge statistics that show 80 to 90 percent of the weapons seized in Mexico are first sold in the United States, calling the numbers highly inflated. After being criticized by the gun lobby, ATF stopped releasing such statistics this year.

"To suggest that U.S. gun laws are somehow to blame for Mexican drug cartel violence is a sad fantasy," said Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action.

Cox said guns are coming to Mexico from other Central American countries and from former Mexican soldiers who have U.S. weapons and are now working for the cartels.

ATF disagreed, saying the biggest factors are the high number of dealers along the border and the convenient location.

When the Post reporter claims that the "ATF disagreed," he doesn't speak for the entire agency, just a regional supervisor that is either pushing a political agenda or lacks the big picture. Either way, his superiors have overruled his opinion with facts for over a year.

The myth that legal guns sales in the United States are responsible for Mexican drug cartel violence took another serious blow last week when an ATF official testified in Congress that only eight percent of weapons recovered in Mexico came through licensed U.S. gun dealers.

This figure is far lower than the 90 percent claim made previously as an appeal to reinstate ineffective gun laws that expired in 2004. The claim — still active among the less informed or serially dishonest — officially became myth during congressional testimony last week when Bill McMahon, deputy assistant director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, revealed the eight percent figure, how it was calculated, and where the 90 percent myth arose from.

Of the 100,000 weapons recovered by Mexican authorities, only 18,000 were determined to have been manufactured, sold, or imported from the United States, and of those 18,000, just 7,900 came from sales by licensed gun dealers.

The Post can't even get through their accompanying photo gallery without exposing their dishonesty; this FN MAG this South African Vector SS-77 machine gun certainly didn't come from a U.S. gun store.

Let's be clear: I am personally of the opinion that too many guns are heading south of the border from the United States, but the media and Administrations in both the U.S. and Mexico need to be honest. The number of guns imported from this country is dwarfed by the number of guns sold, stolen or given to the cartels by Mexican law enforcement and military sources, and from black market smuggling from Central and South America and Asia. You simply cannot get the machine guns and grenades the cartels favor in the United States. They come from corruption in Mexico and the same pipeline that bring in drugs from overseas.

The rest of the article is a complaint about just how dang hard it is for the ATF to prosecute criminals.

Bull.

You can give them all sorts of evidence, including pictures of felons with a gun in their hands, and they will actively fight against prosecuting them.

This article is about politics, not crime prevention.

Update: Per Big Country's expert eye, I've updated the post to correct the machine gun type in the photo. I await with baited breath for the media to explain how an American gun store is responsible for a weapon that cannot be sold on these shores.