US guns and the Drug Wars in Mexico

I know, I said I wouldn't get political in this blog. And I am not taking sides on the Mexican Drug Wars (if I did, it would obviously not be on the cartels side). But the thing I would like to talk about is the way many people are using some skewed statistics from this horrible situation to push gun control. This is another case of something that sounds like it may be common sense, until you realize you aren't getting the whole story.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is another gun control fanatic, much like Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago. He has put together a group called Mayors against Illegal Guns (MAIG). Well, I like the sound of the name, but what it really means is that they want to make all guns illegal for civilians. Not so good.

MAIG created an Issue Brief for Congress, which is available here. In it, MAIG talks about recovered guns that are submitted to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) for tracing. Since BATFE requires Federal Firearms License holders to maintain records, they are able to track down weapons that have been sold in the US. Their document contends:

"Since 2006, 90% of the Mexican crime guns submitted for tracing originated from gun dealers in the United States.

New trace data provided by ATF to Mayors Against Illegal Guns show that from 2006 to 2009, nearly 19,000 traced crime guns were originally sold in the U.S. and recovered and traced to Mexican crimes. The raw number of these guns increased from 1,200 guns in 2006 to 5,194 guns in 2009, and the 2009 total is expected to increase as Mexico continues to submit recently recovered crime guns for tracing.

Three out of four crime guns recovered in Mexican crimes and submitted for tracing were originally sold in a Southwest border state. In 2009, 40.0% of the Mexican crime guns that were traced to the U.S. were originally sold in Texas, 36.1% were originally sold in other Southwest border states (Arizona, New Mexico, California), and 23.9% were originally sold in non-border states."

Sounds pretty damning, right? Common sense, right? Well, look again at the wording. Notice the constant use of the phrase "submitted to tracing". The Mexican government seizes a large number of weapons each year, and if they think it may have originated in the US they will make a trace request. But, according to a Government Accounting Office Report to Congress, they admit that of the 30,000 weapons seized in 2008 alone, only 7,200 (24%) of these were submitted to BATFE for tracing. So, the 90% of submitted guns really is 21.6% of all the guns recovered.

Let's talk about what the tracing means. Federal Firearms License holders are required to maintain records for any new or used weapons they sell or transfer. So, getting a hit on the trace means only that at some point the weapon was sold or transferred in the US. It does not mean that the LAST time it was sold was in the US. The record that is the hit on the trace may be many years old, and there is no telling how many private owners had possession of the weapon during the intermediate time. The weapon may have been stolen during that time, or somehow otherwise illegally obtained. It may have been sold or transferred to someone out of the country, who knows.

So, basically what the data shows is that 21.6% of the weapons seized in Mexico at one time or another passed through one of the largest gun producing and importing countries in the world, and were legally sold or transferred while here.The 90% number simply means that of the weapons the Mexican government thinks may have passed through the US actually did. Big surprise there.

Now, more silly supposed common sense. Statistics show that of all the weapons traced, 95% were tracked back to a gun dealer or pawn shop. Does that make you stop and wonder? Well, hardly surprising because THESE ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO KEEP THESE TRACE RECORDS!!!! They are saying 95% of the records were held by the only people required to keep records. Of course, that is obvious. But the high percentage number fools people in to thinking it is significant.

The final piece of the puzzle involves the last little bit of common sense. With 30,000 guns seized in 1 year (no information on how many weapons there are, seized or not), I doubt drug cartels are stopping by gun shows, private owners, gun shops and pawn brokers to buy 1 gun at a time. No one is knowingly selling guns to drug cartels here. Someone is buying these weapons, consolidating them and sending them south of the border illegally. Anyone buying a weapon for anything other than their own personal use is breaking a huge number of federal laws, even if it is some guy buying a pistol for his wife. Of the 7,200 guns submitted for tracing, 6,480 had US trace records. So, potentially 6,480 times in this one year alone the federally mandated Brady checks did not catch someone who should have either not purchased a weapon, or were conducting a shell transaction. If the checks were made, the gun dealer was doing his job. It was the federal government who fell down on theirs, and now want to blame someone else for their ineptness.

Truth is, way too many people are being killed in these stupid skirmishes. Way too many innocent civilians are losing their lives because the Mexican government can't keep its house in order. Even if you totally remove the guns that came from the US, the drug cartels would still have huge arsenals to draw from. So blaming the human devastation that takes place along the Mexican-US border on the guns is ludicrous. Let's blame it on the drug cartel leaders, who have ZERO respect for human life. And on the cartel foot soldier, who is willing to kill, main, torture and rape to make a buck. And finally on the Mexican (and to a lesser extent US) government for allowing such an evil group to gain so much power that they are now uncontrollable.

One last thought. Since 2006, over 23,000 people have been killed on these drug wars. Of that number, only 8-10% have been police, military, security or public officers. So over 20,000 innocent civilians have been unable to protect themselves from these murderous fiends. Maybe, instead of worrying about how many guns are in cartel hands we should think about arming the people who live in these areas. Just like common criminals, these murderous thugs may just think twice about opening fire in a crowded market place if they knew that almost every single person there had a weapon to defend themselves with. During World War II, it wasn't the French and American army that caused so much havoc for the Germans. It was the armed civilian resistance fighters who fought back, knowing that they were at least partially responsible for securing their own safety. This unconventional warfare had many times the disruptive power of a military attack. Or the tremendous disadvantage our own military saw in areas where you can't tell combatants for civilians, like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia or Viet Nam. Maybe we should be paying more attention to arming the defenceless and then see how things progress.