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The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.
Fox News | April 02, 2009 | William La Jeunesse & Maxim Lott
EXCLUSIVE: You've heard this shocking "fact" before -- on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.
-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.
-- CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.
-- California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: "It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors ... come from the United States."
-- William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that "there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States."
There's just one problem with the 90 percent "statistic" and it's a big one:
It's just not true.
Note the date of the above Fox News report, April 02, 2009. It should be obvious that Fast and Furious/Gunwalker was an operation contrived solely to bolster the Obama administration's narrative that "90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States."
I've spoken with several current and retired employees of NDIC about Fast and Furious since the NDIC's role in appraising Eric Holder hit the news earlier this week. (NDIC is headquartered in my hometown, and I know a half dozen current and retired employees.)
I specifically asked how ATF expected to trace these weapons once they "walked" into Mexico, since, unlike the "Wide Receiver" program in existence under Bush, these weapons were not wired with RF devices to track them remotely.
They all agreed that the only way ATF could have traced these weapons was that Mexico, which is a member of Interpol, would have traced the origins of the weapons via the INTERPOL Firearms Tracing System.
And the only way the authorities would have been able to get the serial numbers from these weapons would be if they were seized after a crime, or in a raid, because the ATF did not appraise the Mexican government that they were being "walked" there.
In other words, the ATF knew they would have to be used in a violent crime in Mexico and traced through Interpol in order to be traced back to US FFL dealers, if they were to be traced at all.
There was no pretext of tracing or seizing these guns prior to their recovery by Mexican authorities. And since the Mexican authorities only knew what they were receiving from Interpol about their origin, Mexican reports on their provenance would have matched the Obama administration's claims that "90% of guns used in Mexican drug violence come from gun dealers in the USA.
