Calderon: LIAR, Manipulator, Gun Banner

Mexican President Calderone came to the USA and insulted us, we all know that. But, he also LIED and manipulated our lame stream media and called for an assualt weapons ban in the USA.  Knowing full well that our pathetic, statist loving agit-prop media would run with it and misrepresent it, he actually told the truth.  Eighty percent of the guns that the USA has traced for Mexico originated in the USA.  That is not 80% of all guns confiscated in Mexico.  See the trick?  Well, sucks to be Mexico, doesn't it?  I guess you better step up enforcement of the northern border to keep all those dangerous weapons out.  Why have they not done so already if this is such a problem?  Why don't they build a fence?  Why don't they deploy their military?  We all know the answer to this.  Cut off the flow south, and you cut off the flow north (or at least restrict it to certain locations which we can then easily patrol) which in turn cuts off the flow of $20 billion per year south.

Speaking of enforcing their northern border, local news just reported that the US Consulate in Nogales has issued a travel warning due to unauthorized police check points which have begun to appear on Highway 8 which is the main highway from Lukeville, Arizona south 50 miles to the beach resort of  Puerto Penasco (aka Rocky Point), Mexico.  The warning also states "Consulate staff on official travel between cities must use armored vehicles" and "At some checkpoints, motorists who have not stopped at unofficial checkpoints have been shot at and killed.".  Many Arizonans vacation there regularly and have for years.  Some even foolishly own homes or condos there in spite of the rampant and open corruption.  Unauthorized police checkpoints should frighten you.  We all know that a huge percentage of the police in Mexico are on the payroll of the drug cartels.  Americans turn up missing in Mexico often enough to concern us all.  Anyone foolish enough to continue to go to Mexico after these episodes should study this picture.  Innocent mistake or malicious intent or just plain stupid.  That is what you're dealing with.

Back to Calderone's lies.  From The Heritage Foundation:

In his speech before a Joint Session of Congress yesterday, President Felipe Calderon of Mexico made a bold claim. He asserted that:

"Just to give you an idea, we have seized 75,000 guns and assault weapons in Mexico in the last three years. And more than 80 percent of those we have been able to trace came from the United States — from the United States."

The media immediately picked up on this claim. As Reuters summarized the President’s remarks:

"[He] said more than 80 percent of [the guns] came from the United States"

Except that, of course, was not what the President said. The President included a crucial qualifier in his statement: he was referring only to the guns that Mexico has (with U.S. assistance) been able to trace. And in that context, the President’s claim is correct: he was referring to a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report concluding that, of the guns seized in Mexico and given to the ATF for tracing from 2004 through 2008, approximately 87 percent originated in the U.S.

But this number says nothing about the percentage of guns seized in Mexico that originated in the U.S., because the U.S. does not trace the majority of guns seized in Mexico. Figures like “87 percent” sound impressive, but actual numbers are more illustrative. According to the GAO, the number of guns seized in Mexico that have been traced back to the U.S. has ranged from 5,260 in 2005 to 1,950 in 2006 to 3,060 in 2007 to 6,700 in 2008.

Thus, if the “last three years” the President mentioned are 2007, 2008, and 2009, only 9,760 of the guns seized in those years – the total of 2007 and 2008 – definitely came from the U.S. The U.S. share for 2009 has not yet been reported, but even if it doubled the total of 2008, the U.S. share for all three years would be less than a third of the 75,000 seizures in Mexico. A more realistic U.S. share is between 20 and 25 percent.

The argument the President made today has been refuted again and again, but it is not surprising that he relied on it. The only surprising fact is that the President couched his remarks in the context of a request for an ‘assault weapons’ ban, instead of in the context of support for the OAS’s Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials, commonly known as CIFTA.

Perhaps this is a tactful admission that the Convention is seriously flawed. But if the President was trying to be tactful, he might have omitted his argument that the U.S. faces an incipient armed rebellion unless it acts on his request. The basic fact is that Mexico’s problems are fundamentally homegrown. It may be politically convenient for the President of Mexico to claim U.S. responsibility, but in the form he presented them today, those claims are regrettably misleading.