MEXICAN DRUG CARTEL GUNS

Time after time we hear that the Mexican drug cartels get almost all of their guns from the U.S., most of them from Texas gun dealers by way of straw buyers.

According to Thursday’s Borderland Beat, ‘the latest report of a year-long investigation by The Washington Post has uncovered the names of the top 12 U.S. dealers of guns traced to Mexico in the past two years. Eight of the top 12 dealers are in Texas, three are in Arizona, and one is in California. In Texas, two of the four Houston area Carter's Country stores are on the list, along with four gun retailers in the Rio Grande Valley at the southern tip of the state. There are 3,800 gun retailers in Texas, 300 in Houston alone.’

The figure thrown around by Mexican and American government officials that 80-90 percent of cartel guns come from the U.S. is a bunch of crap. Mexican officials, the ATF and FBI connive to make it appear that 80-90 percent of the cartel guns come from the U.S.

From my previous blogs, here is what FactCheck revealed about the alleged distribution of those drug cartel guns:

__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 guns it already has reason to believe came from the United States.

From those same blogs, here is what Joan Schaan’s study showed about the alleged distribution:

__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.

Whenever the Mexicans seize a cache of weapons they cull out the ones that can be traced back to the U.S. and with the connivance of the ATF and FBI declare that 80-90 percent of the guns originated in the U.S. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mexican drug cartels receive most of their weapons from south of the Mexican border, not the northern border, and from foreign (not U.S.) arms dealers.