The Times On Gunwalker - BS Will Never Die

The NY Times editors deplore the mistakes that were made during Fast and Furious (and of course they play the 'Bush did it, too' Wide Receiver card) but they insist on keeping the focus on the eed for stricter gun control.  To this end, they rely on phony statistics and very careful presentation:

Congressional Republicans have rebuked the Obama administration for the Fast and Furious fiasco. That this tactic — which ranges so far from proper law enforcement — was used in the Bush years is equally disturbing. Congress should bring responsible officials to account, but it cannot duck the need for far stronger laws to control gun trafficking.

Mr. Breuer said in the past five years, 94,000 weapons have been recovered in Mexico and 64,000 were traced to American sources. “We need more tools,” he said.

Now, let's note that the Times is correctly reporting something that Mr. Breuer did say, so they won't see a need for a correction.  However, it is hardly possible that Mr. Breuer's assertion was correct, as the Times ought to know.

Breuer first, responding to a question from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (my emphasis):

FEINSTEIN: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that. Mr. Breuer, in June of this year, I received a letter from the ATF. This was in response to a letter I had asked them from Acting Director Melson, stating that 29,284 firearms recovered in Mexico in '09 and 2010, and submitted to the ATF tracing center [WSJ link]. With those weapons, 20,504, or 70 percent, were United States sourced. A country of origin for the remaining firearms apparently could not be determined by ATF, meaning that the number could be much higher. What info -- what actually is the number? Now this was back in June. Is that the most current number? Is it fair to some that 70 percent of the firearms showing up in Mexico are from the United States?

BREUER: Thank you, Senator, for the question, and for your leadership on this issue. You have, of course, identified the paramount issue that we have to face as we deal with transnational organized crime from the Mexican cartels. From my understanding, 94,000 weapons have been recovered in the last five years in Mexico. Those are just the ones recovered, not the ones that are in Mexico. Of the 94,000 weapons that have been recovered in Mexico, 64,000 of those are traced to the United States. We have to do something to prevent criminals from getting those guns, Senator. That is my understanding of the most accurate numbers.

So Ms. Feinstein made the point that among guns that were both recovered and submitted for tracing, roughly 70% came from the US.  This distinction had been kicked around back when Democrats (such as Obama or Ms. Feinstein) were claiming that 90% of recovered guns in Mexico were traced back to the US.  Back in reality, it turned out that plenty of guns recovered in Mexico were never submitted for tracing (FactCheck), so the 90% figure was probably closer to 34%, or maybe 17%.

On that theme, a report from the DoJ Inspector General in November 2010 had this to say about the efficacy of gun tracing efforts with Mexico (p. 89 .pdf):

The number of trace requests from Mexico has increased since FY 2006, but most seized guns are not traced.

Mexican crime gun trace requests to ATF have increased since Project Gunrunner was established. The number of traces of Mexican crime guns increased from 5,834 in FY 2004 to almost 22,000 in FY 2009.

Yet, in a June 2009 report, the GAO estimated that less than a quarter of crime guns transferred to the Mexican Attorney General’s office in 2008 were submitted to ATF for tracing.

Even on the trace requests, the OIG was gloomy: from the table and chart on p. 90 of the .pdf, we see that of the 21,762 trace requests for FY2009, only 6,664, or 31%, were successful.  On that point (p. 9)

Further, most trace requests that are submitted to ATF from Mexico are considered “unsuccessful” because of missing or improperly entered gun data.

One wonders whether the Times editors have the least interest in apprising themselves of this information.  In responding to Ms. Feinstein, Mr. Breuer didn't even manage to include the caveat that most seized guns are never submitted to the ATF for tracing. However, the Times is happy to go to war for gun control on the basis of phony Administration intelligence.

Comments

[Rob Crawford]

Who cares? There's another excuse to plant a knife in Republican candidate's back -- that's the IMPORTANT news!

[Minimalist Poster]

that's certainly the plan
but that's not "news"

[Foo Bar]

TM, you make a valid point here, but you undermine yourself by twisting what the FactCheck piece says. Why do you say "maybe 17%" when the FactCheck piece says that figure is "based on a mistaken assumption that throws its figure way off" and refers to "The Myth of 17%"?

[narciso]

Most m anufacturers are American, specially in the automatic weapons, with the exception of Austrian Glocks and a few others. Many weapons are floating around from when we armed
governments and even some insurgent groups in Latin America, What this has to do with the price of coffee, yes I'm being rhetorical.

[boris]

The Mexican border is far from secure and Mexico is even less interested in securing it than the dimorats. Under those conditions the argument must be "we need to repeal the 2nd so illegal Mexicans won't buy US guns here and take them home".

Seems to me Mexico and the dimorats have made a choice here. Open borders. Complain about guns.

Boo Hoo Foo.

[mbs]

"Congress should bring responsible officials to account, but it cannot duck the need for far stronger laws to control gun trafficking."

When the government is the one trafficking the weapons, I don't think stricter laws are going to help.

[maryrose]

This is all a smoke screen to cover up for OBama and Holder a day before Holder has to testify before the Senate committee. I don't care what came before this death of Terry.Deal with the current facts of the situation. Holder knew about it ,lied about it and Obama approved it as part of his behind the scenes attempt to regulate guns without a congressional law being signed to do it.

[Jim Rhoads a/k/a vnjagvet]

The attempt to regulate guns without a congressional law being signed to do it is no longer behind the scenes. The regime's intent to modify the Second Amendment is now in the open.

I don't think Issa and his committee will be deterred despite the diversion.

[Benjamin Franklin]

Why do we need ATF in addition to the DEA? There are turf squabbles between local, state and Fed anyway. Why the redundancy?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/world/americas/united-states-drug-enforcement-agency-squads-extend-reach-of-drug-war.html?_r=2&ref=global-home

"The D.E.A. now has five commando-style squads it has been quietly deploying for the past several years to Western Hemisphere nations — including Haiti, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Belize — that are battling drug cartels, according to documents and interviews with law enforcement officials.

The program — called FAST, for Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team — was created during the George W. Bush administration to investigate Taliban-linked drug traffickers in Afghanistan. Beginning in 2008 and continuing under President Obama, it has expanded far beyond the war zone."

[PaulV]

How many of those guns were sold by members of the Mexican army. Perhaps the US could secure the border.

[Dantes]

How many were weapons sold to the Mexican Government by the US?

[boris]

As long as the dimorats want an unsecure border there will be an unsecure border. One party can not effectively secure the border.

[Benjamin Franklin]

Not news. What is news is that they are calling it our publicly....

Why do you suppose? (start drumbeat)

http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/11/dni-report-on-economic-cyberespionage/

"Yesterday the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive of the DNI released a Report entitled Foreign Spies Stealing US Economic Secrets in Cyberspace. The Report explained in general terms what the government has long said: U.S. economic secrets are being stolen in very large quantities through cyber-exploitations. The report noted that “Chinese actors” and “Russia’s intelligence services” are the primary culprits. Again, this is not news to anyone who follows cyberseceurity, but it was portrayed as a big deal in the press because the U.S. government openly singled out the Chinese and the Russians as the main threat. The report also noted “[o]ther countries with closer ties to the United States have conducted [computer network exploitations] and other forms of intelligence collection to obtain US economic and technology data, often taking advantage of the access they enjoy as allies or partners to collect sensitive military data and information on programs.”

[Extraneus]

If there was even a shred of evidence that F&F attempted to track the guns -- even if there was a tracking device inside of one of the thousands of purposely trafficked guns -- it would have been shouted from the rooftops. Therefore, there isn't any such evidence, and there was no attempt to track any of these guns.

They haven't been able to make a logical argument that this was a valid law enforcement operation, so it obviously wasn't.

The statistical b.s. is just a smokescreen.

[Extraneus]

Foo Bar, are you willing to say what organization you're with? Sorry if you have and I've missed it.

[Extraneus]

House Oversight Chairman Calls for Probe into ACORN Role in Occupy Wall Street

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is calling for an investigation into allegations that ACORN-related group New York Communities for Change "engaged in fraud through its participation in the Occupy Wall Street protests."

[Extraneus]

In a letter dated Monday, Issa, R-Calif., called for U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch of the Eastern District of New York to launch a probe into allegations first reported by FoxNews.com that NYCC may have "solicited donations from union members under false pretenses and misappropriated those funds to support the protesters."

[Benjamin Franklin]

Fox news. The sole heir of the title...Journalistic Efficacy...

Gawd, I thank the Almighty for Rupert Murdoch.

[matt]

when is someone going to go after Gloria Allred? She is the chief sleazemaster of the Democratic party. There has to be a paper trail on that woman.

Every time there is a crooked allegation, you can bet she is right there in front of the cameras. And every time, she hangs the "victims" out to dry.

The last one, Meg Whitman's housekeeper may have already been deported. I would say that someone like Breitbart should do an investigative piece.

[Pops]

Apparently American guns are doing the jobs Mexicn guns just won't do.

Maybe Ms. Feinstein should worry more about getting hit by a illegal alien drunk driver.

[Pops]

Go figure, the French go off on a anti-Jew, anti- Bibi rant and Obama basically agrees with it.

The press all agree to keep the information from the public..because these two genious don't realize they never took their microphones off...

ahh, another hard day of being a journalist in the tank for the left.

[Pops]

I'm confused. What does it matter if guns go across the border? Why not reeally big, dangerous guns..I'm talking high powered automatic shit, tanks, torpedos, flame throwers, real death dealers.

It doesn't matter how dangerous the weapon, since the Mexicans are just innocent vegetable pickers trying to eek out a living.

Where did anyone get the idea that these people were dangerous thugs? I always here on the news that they are innocent, God fearng family men who would hurt a fly. I mean, we didn't even need a fence they were so harmless.

Now all the sudden their a bunch of killers...what gives?

[Benjamin Franklin]

"what gives?" I dunno. I guess some can't separate the wheat from the chaff...

[Pops]

Someone had cmmented in the past that a fence was ridiculous because in some places the border goes through the middle of towns.

Let me set the record straight. Since Mexico recognizes no border, this idea that we need to respect the border through a town is ludicrous. You simply re-draw the border and put the town on the US side and build the fence south of the town.

thus, the entire town becomes part of America.

What are the Mexicans going to do? Demand we respect the border they say doesn't exist??

[Janet]

Here is Jesse Jackson at Occupy DC.

"We will not tolerate behavior that jeopardizes public safety," Gray said.

That is the Mayor of DC. He is telling a lie....because they ARE tolerating behavior that jeopardizes public safety.

[jimmyk]

Go figure, the French go off on a anti-Jew, anti- Bibi rant and Obama basically agrees with it.

For those wondering about his, here's a link.

http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/obama-sarkozy-criticize-netanyahu/2011/11/07/id/417182

Or this:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4145266,00.html

which includes:

The surprising lack of coverage may be explained by a report alleging that reporters present at the event were requested to sign an agreement to keep mum on the subject of the embarrassing comments.

They were "requested," and kindly obliged. One can imagine the guffaws in response to such a request if, say, Bush had said something embarrassing,

[Ignatz]

Speaking of Holder and BS apparently he intends to use his F&F testimony tomorrow to call for more gun control.
These guys double down on losing hands so much it must be a casino owners dream to see them coming.

[MarkO]

At least the NYT is useful for telegraphing the Progressives' next move. I fear for a country with citizens so uninformed and stupid that this seemingly makes sense to them.

This makes my head hurt.

[jimmyk]

These guys double down on losing hands so much it must be a casino owners dream to see them coming.

Yes, just as the former Enron adviser tells us today that rather than complain about Solyndra we should focus instead on the technological success of cheap solar panels that caused its failure.

[Neo]

"Apparently American guns are doing the jobs Mexicn guns just won't do."

These aren't "illegal" guns .. these are "undocumented" guns

[matt]

I wonder if Holder will take the 5th?

At an international manufacturing conference in Taipei, and a lot of very srious people are deeply concerned with Europe and the States. I kindly reminded them of the China bubble.

As to Sarkozy and Obama, I wonder what they will do when the IAEA report becomes official if it ever does.

"Oh gee, BiBi, Ahmedinejad would never really nuke Tel Aviv." uttered by these scumbags should have the IAF practicing strike packages in @ 15 minutes.

In assessing global leadership these days the short answer is "there ain't any".

[narciso]

I'm dissapointed in Sarkozy, if what was said is true. When I read Sanger's 'the Challenge'
which conveniently came out after the election, I was struck by how much had been left out of the coverage of the NIE, about projects 110 and 111, and Fekrazadeh, their
chief honcho, in the Times reporting

[NK]

Holder-- I am curious to see if any repubs roast Holder today. His prepared statement is as close as anything to an admission he perjured himself in Congress last Spring. Will he embarass the Obamaniac today?-- hurt Obama's re-election chances? Yesterday Daley - Meets- Bus and is fired as chief of staff. Obama throws everyone under the bus for his own failures, narcissists do that. Personally I,ve always thought the only Bus exemptions are Mooseshell and Jarr Jarr Jarrett, Holder may also be exempt because of his left-wing ideological purity, but if F&F becomes a media storm, I think Holder - Meets -- Bus. We shall see.

[eaglewingz08]

Holder admitted during his testimony that Wide Receiver was not a gun walking operation like F&F, because the program was conducted with knowledge of Mexican Government, the guns were placed under surveillance, arrests were made prior to their transport to Mexico, and the two governments did their best to track the guns when they did cross the border.
Blame Bush fails again. Holder PWNED.

[BR]

You're right, Eaglewingz08 :)

I was just reading this article and laughed over the word "controlled" operation, when the weapons were intentionally allowed to leave the area of observation in the hands of known criminals [by, ha, criminals in the govt].

The Issa/Grassley investigation is certainly closing in.