ATF HAS BECOME THE POLITICAL MOUTHPIECE OF ANTI-GUNNERS

As a peace officer, criminal justice educator and gun dealer, I used to hold ATF in the highest regard. In recent years though, ATF has become politicized to the extent that it has become the mouthpiece of anti-gunners. I’ve become convinced that ATF either manipulates or even goes so far as to fabricates information it releases on how the Mexican drug cartels obtain their weapons.
　
President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder are all flat out lying when they claim that the Mexican drug cartels are getting 90 percent of their military-style weapons from the United States, mostly from Texas gun dealers. And those are the folks ATF is working for.
　
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.'
　
And Joan Neuhaus Schaan, a fellow for Homeland Security and Terrorism programs in the prestigious James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, has exposed the Obama administration for throwing out phony statistics on the drug cartel guns. Her research revealed that of the weapons acquired by Mexican drug cartels, only 20-25 percent come from the United States. The remaining 75-80 percent are believed to come from Asia, Europe, South America and the Soviet bloc states. Schaan believes that to the extent U.S. military weapons have been found, they have most likely been sold to or provided by the U.S. government to another government and subsequently diverted. [See DRUG CARTELS DO NOT GET MILITARY-STYLE WEAPONS FROM TEXAS GUN DEALERS (2), 10-16-2009]

On Monday, Police One carried an Associated Press story (‘10 STATES SELL HALF OF IMPORTED CRIME GUNS: States with more relaxed gun laws are favored by criminals and gun traffickers as the sources of guns’) in which Mayors Against Illegal Guns, an association of more than 500 mayors led by New York's Michael Bloomberg and Boston's Thomas Menino, complained that 21,000 guns connected to crimes in their cities had been exported from other states. The AP story also reported that ATF traced more than 145,000 guns used in crimes in 2009 and found that more than 43,000 of those weapons were sold in other states, with 49 percent having been sold in Georgia, Florida, Virginia, Texas, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, California or Arizona.
　
Bloomberg, Menino, Chicago’s Richard Daley and most other big city mayors are well know for their advocacy of strict gun controls. That alone should make the ATF statistics highly suspect. It looks like ATF is now manipulating or fabricating information on the exportation of guns within the U.S. just like they've been doing it with the Mexican statistics.
　
Dozens of law enforcement officers quickly responded to the AP story on Police One, with almost every one of them beating up on those ATF statistics. One of them, Albanyga, belittled those statistics when he said, "According to the website www.trueknowledge.com, the 2010 population of the U.S. is 305,689,000. The population of the ten states listed here, combined, is 141,431,788. That works out to roughly 46 percent of the U.S. population living in these 10 states, where 49 percent of the guns were sold. Bet they didn't take that into account either." It has come down to where many law enforcement officers no longer trust the politicized ATF.
　
In the past, I have posted several blogs in which I wrote that the Mexican drug cartels do not get their military-style weapons from dealers at gun shows in Texas and other states. Two of the Police One readers responded to the AP story by slamming the claims that the Mexican drug cartels get their guns from us. I could not have put it any better.
　
M. Towers wrote: As a San Antonio/Bexar County Officer, I can tell you that things are HOT on the Mexican border, and it ain't with Texas gun show guns. Mexico has TWO coast lines; one on the pacific and one on the Atlantic. They can buy all the full auto, belt fed, and com bloc rocket launchers they want at much cheaper prices. And if you think the Mexican government controls things, just ask all the public officials and policemen assassinated in the last 4-5 years--26,000 and counting!!! And, Hillary wants to give them another 1.2Billion in aid so they can buy more guns. The problem is NOT Texas, it is Mexico!!! Wake up!!!!!!!!!!
　
And John Carp wrote: It's funny, when ever politicians lay out confiscated weapons for the press to see, they are 99 COMBLOC, fully automatic capable assault rifles, belt fed machine guns, (RPK) RPG's and hand grenades. Then the officials have the shear gall to say these are being purchased at Walmart and Big 5! This may be one of the biggest lies of this decade! How about where they really come from? Up from deep South America and former Soviet puppet states. Yes, I know you've seen M-16's! The "wonderful" federal police in Mexico routinely sell them and other military hardware to the bad guys!
　
Shame, shame on ATF! A once proud law enforcement agency has let itself become politicized and it seems to have come down on the side of the gun control crowd.