The guns myth and Mexico

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The Headline:

The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.

While 90 percent of the guns traced to the U.S. actually originated in the United States, the percent traced to the U.S. is only about 17 percent of the total number of guns reaching Mexico.

By William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott
FOXNews.com
Thursday, April 02, 2009

According to The Right Jack, claims by US Government officials in 2009 are that 90 per cent of the guns in Mexico originate in the USA. This Fox News report shows that to be untrue. Counter claims are that these false figures put forth by 2009 US government officials and the media are being used to weaken the 2nd amendment. Quotes from the Fox article that follow show that around 83 per cent of the guns in Mexico come from places like China, North Korea, Spain, Israel and Russia.

“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.”

Myth Busted, as that TV show proudly proclaims.