President Obama, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder are all claiming that the Mexican drug cartels are getting 90 percent of their military assault weapons from the United States, mostly from Texas gun dealers. Their allegations are obviously designed to restore the ban on such weapons, a 10-year ban that had been allowed to expire during the Bush administration.
On 3-27-09, I blogged "Drug Cartels Do Not Get Military-Style Weapons From Texas Gun Dealers." In today's Townhall.com, John Stossel had a column in which he blamed our drug prohibition laws, rather than our demand for drugs, for the violence of the drug cartels. Interestingly though, he also debunked the Obama administration's claim that the Mexican drug cartels were getting most of their guns from America's licensed gun dealers.
Here is what John Stossel wrote about that:
'The president says, "More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our shared border, and that's why we're ramping up the number of law enforcement personnel on our border".
That 90 percent figure has been repeated many times, but FactCheck.org says it's bogus:
"The figure represents only the percentage of crime guns that have been submitted by Mexican officials and traced by U.S. officials. ... U.S. and Mexican officials both say that Mexico recovers more guns than it submits for tracing ... ".
And FactCheck says Mexico only submits those it already has reason to believe came from the United States.'
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