The Obama administration and his pet parrots in the mainstream media have been squawking about 90% of drug-war guns seized in Mexico coming from the USA!!! However, Ed Morrissey does the actual math on Hotair.com (quoted below, "The WaPo repeats the Mexican gun canard" 16 April 2009) and dissects the Washington Post's article written by Spencer Hsu:
"The ATF correctly states that of the guns that can be successfully traced by the ATF or FBI from the guns sent to them by Mexican authorities, about 90% have origins in the US. However, Mexico doesn’t send all of the guns that they capture to the US for tracing; only about a third of them get sent here. Of that third, roughly half can’t be traced at all, thanks to efforts to strip the weapons of registration markings. With the other half, about nine of ten can be traced to the US, which works out to about 17% of all weapons seized by Mexican officials.
Even Hsu’s data should have given him a clue. With 35,000 weapons confiscated, a 90% figure should mean the US identified 31,500 weapons as originating in the US. However, during that time, only 5,114 of those weapons got traced back to the US, or about 17%, give or take. The rest of the weapons originate in Russia, China, Central and South America — and from discharged veterans and deserter from the Mexican Army, who keep their weapons and then sell them on the black market.
This is the kind of information that might be handy to WaPo readers: accurate and factual. Perhaps both governments trot out that nonsense, but shouldn’t newspapers exist to test government claims? However, when one knows what the real numbers are, one can’t write about an “iron river of guns.” Maybe Hsu should stick to poetry."
Even Hsu’s data should have given him a clue. With 35,000 weapons confiscated, a 90% figure should mean the US identified 31,500 weapons as originating in the US. However, during that time, only 5,114 of those weapons got traced back to the US, or about 17%, give or take. The rest of the weapons originate in Russia, China, Central and South America — and from discharged veterans and deserter from the Mexican Army, who keep their weapons and then sell them on the black market.
This is the kind of information that might be handy to WaPo readers: accurate and factual. Perhaps both governments trot out that nonsense, but shouldn’t newspapers exist to test government claims? However, when one knows what the real numbers are, one can’t write about an “iron river of guns.” Maybe Hsu should stick to poetry."
read the full post here: http://hotair.com/archives/2009/04/16/the-wapo-repeats-the-mexican-gun-canard/
So according to liberal talking points, 17% = 90% as long as it ends in gun control. Remember: if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. Thanks Lenin and WaPo!
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