In the news, Obama’s gun stats are cooked, say libertarians.
“ATF Special Agent William Newell tells Fox News that between 2007 and 2008, around 11,000 guns used in Mexican crimes appeared to come from the United States and were submitted to the ATF for tracing. Of those, only 6,000 could be successfully traced. Of those, only 5,114, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover, were found to have come from the U.S.
Obama’s “90 percent” number refers, not to the percentage of “guns recovered in Mexico,” as Obama claims, but to the “percent of the traced firearms” according to a BATFE spokeswoman.
But Mexican authorities report that in those two years, a total of 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes. That means 68 percent of the guns recovered by Mexican police did not even appear to come from the United States.
That means only 5,114 out of 29,000 guns used in Mexican crimes were found to have come from the United States. That figure would be 17 percent, not the 90 percent repeated by Obama.
Further weakening Obama’s case is the fact firearms manufacturers such as Colt legally shipped some of those United States-originated guns into Mexico for permitted uses, such as by the Mexican military.
Research finds most of the guns used by Mexican criminals come from overseas black markets, Russian crime organizations, South America, Asia, Guatemala and even the Mexican army.
“No reasonable person would think Obama didn’t consult the BATFE to get numbers before coming up with his talking points, and this information has been public for over two weeks. Barack Obama chose to intentionally spread fake information because he hopes to use fear to ram his anti-Second Amendment agenda through the Senate,” said Ferguson.
During his term in the Senate, Obama earned an “F” rating from Gunowners of America, as well as the National Rifle Association. …”
Correction: The actual figure seems more like 35% than 19%, according to FactCheck.org.
My Comment
This doesn’t surprise me at all. As some wag wrote, “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics….”
The conventional wisdom is that guns don’t deter crimes; that guns cause violence, that only semi-literate goons believe in self-defense, and that second amendment rights are pushed by a lunatic fringe of bible-thumping, arms-stockpiling David Koresh mutants. Well, whatever Koresh was or wasn’t, the remedy for lunacy, child-molestation, fundamentalism or any of his other sins in the eyes of the Feds was not to incinerate him and scores of human beings, including children.
Which is just what Bill Clinton’s AG Janet Reno did at Waco, Texas, 16 years ago, as Anthony Gregory notes in this article. It was one of the most infamous and pointless crack-downs of federal power on the heads of citizens. The usual line is that the Koresh group deserved to be burned to a crisp since they were cultists and child abusers — this from people who would fight to the death for the right of serial killers to endless appeals.
The second amendment of the Bill of Rights wasn’t meant just for state militias. It was meant for individuals.
And the reasoning behind it was impeccable: weakness invites abuse.
Right now, the citizenry has been all but disarmed.
Any wonder it’s being abused by the government?
Mexico is the 12th to 13th largest economy in the world and an income that by many measures is higher that Russia and on par with Poland. In fact Monterrey in norhern Mexico has a higher per capita product than buenos aires. They make cars, steel, ships, electronics and all manner of advanced manufacturing products. They even made tanks up until the 80’s. They even had rifle manufactures (small) pre nafta. Point–well within the technological capability of Mexico to produce firearms. India with a slightly larger economy and ten times the population has nukes–the mexicans can produce AK-s as well as the ukranians if need be. The arguments bandied about are so silly and well insulting…