Pre-Rebutted

The Hill recycles some phony (but updated!) ATF statistics that were debunked last November (my emphasis):

Nearly 70 percent of all guns found in Mexico came from the U.S. over the past four years, according to data released by the federal government on Thursday.

More than 68,000 of the 99,691 firearms that were recovered between 2007 and 2011, and submitted to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for trace testing, were either made in the U.S. or legally brought into the U.S. at one point, according to the agency.

Both gun-rights supporters and opponents have used the ATF’s numbers in years past to argue for their cause.

Gun-rights advocates say the numbers do not accurately reflect the true number of guns found in Mexico, which they argue is much higher. But instead, the ATF's data reflect only the number of guns that were submitted for traces. Some gun advocates in the U.S. have argued further that Democrats try to use the inflated numbers to make their case for stricter gun laws.

We surely do. Last November we wrote this in commenting on the latest ATF estimate of 70% of guns, etc:

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%.

I also cited this Dept. of Justice OIG report from Nov. 2010:

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.

This latest report will be subject to the same objections and data limitations. That said, the old objections may need updating because the ATF got an expanded data set from Mexico to revise their 2007-2009 data:

This is one of the zombie lies of the Obama Administration. I am highly confident the Times will present it without criticism or nuance, as they did last fall. Let's see...

MOVING BACK ONE TRENCH: I just can't find reliable numbers for total guns recovered by the Mexican authorities relative to the number submitted for tracing. But let's grant Sen. Feinstein her dream and assume that the ATF is checking every gun recovered in Mexico - what are the policy implications for US gun control?

Surely that depends on whether the Mexican cartels have access to other sources of weaponry at comparable prices and volumes (and where do they get their hand grenades?)

To illustrate the obvious, I will estimate that 90% of the food my family eats at home comes from a supermarket a mile away. If that supermarket goes out of business, will my family starve? Hardly - there are a number of shopping alternatives within two or three miles. The world will lose two or three minutes of right-wing blogging while I expand my carbon footprint but nothing else will change.

Politically there might be some benefit to showing Mexico we are trying to help, but my guess is that even incredibly strict US gun control would do virtually nothing to disarm the cartels and merely be an ineffective feel-good measure.  In other words, perfect for the Dems.

Comments

[boris]

Seems to me the proper word would be "prefudiate".

[Dave Schuler]

It's not lying. It's acting.

[Jack is Back!]

Democrats lie in order to push gun control? The things you learn every day:)

/snark

[BR]

That's no smoking gun, that's an empty gun.
That piano's wires have already been cut.
This is so ridiculous, I've gotta make up new idioms.

[narciso]

They aren't buying that story, in the comments, I posted the FactCheck and the 2010 DOJ report, just for good measure.

[GMAX]

I am highly confident of that as well. Plus I am highly confident that Duda will tell us that lying like this is a "win win". The things you learn on JOM...

[narciso]

And this one is similarly bogus, with the context of the McRaven memo;

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/224185-obama-campaign-suggests-romney-would-not-have-launched-bin-laden-raid

[Jim,MtnView,Ca,USA]

Moved up from older post.
Greece will take the money first, then charge people with tax evasion.
LUN.

Do other nations do this?

[BR]

Jordy Yager, author of that unbalanced intro on Fast and Furious at The Hill.

Pic and blurb.

[Ranger]

Do other nations do this?

IIRC the IRS used to do this here until congress finally changed the law back in the 1990s. The burden of proof was on the taxpayer to prove the IRS assessment was wrong as well.

[Jim,MtnViewCA,USA]

Thanks, Ranger. Holy Cow.
"The power to tax...."

[Rick Ballard]

TM,

Today's GDP number invites another look at Ray Fair's model regarding the popular vote for both Presidential and Congressional elections. When I punch in 2.2 as the average of the last three quarters and drop the 'strong quarter' to 0, the model returns 48.86% for the President and 45.90% for Dem Congresscritters.

There are now only two quarters left to count in the President's Reign of Incompetence and there is nothing to suggest that the next two reports will be any better than the one which came out today.

[Ranger]

Rick,

That matches up pretty well with the guy at RCP who says incumbents get about .5% of a point more in votes than their overall approval ratings. Given that Obama is floating right around 48% approval in the RCP averave, that would put him right around 48.5 to 49% in the popular vote.

[Rick Ballard]

Ranger,

I believe we'll see downward revisions to this report and there is a very decent possibility that the next two quarters will be negative. ZeroHedge has a couple of takes on the numbers and the drop in the personal savings rate coupled with weak fixed investment and government spending raise the probability of a recession substantially.

[narciso]

A little context about that Ad;

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/deanbarnett/2007/05/01/mitt_and_osama/print

[narciso]

And Chutzpah, further defined;

http://www.jammiewf.com/2012/pathetic-guy-who-passed-on-killing-bin-laden-says-romney-wouldnt-have-ordered-killing-of-bin-laden/

[Landru]

"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"

Right. And I think it is safe to assume that the Mexicans do not randonly select the guns sent for tracing to the US. They examine all, and select only those with markings (i.e. serial numbers) suggesting a US origin to be sent for Us tracing. The 75%+ that were not sent for tracing to the US likely did not have any markings or other indicators that indicated a possible US origin, so were not sent for US tracing. In other words, they could see right away that the weapon probably did not originate in the US, and so excluded it.

[Ranger]

Jim, one of the worst cases I ever heard from the "bad old days" was a woman who wanted to make sure she was properly accounting for her activites from some activity or another that wasn't technically an enterprise, but was still generating income. The IRS reviewed her situation and told her she owed no taxes and to not count the money as income. Several years later they came back and assessed her for back taxes and penalties. She protested and produced the original letter. The IRS's argument was that they had made and error in their original finding, but they were under no obligation to notify her of their own error. The tax judge found for the IRS, since she could not show why the original IRS finding was correct, and the current interpretation was wrong.

[Ranger]

Rick,

I think a lot of Obama's current high (relative to earlier) rating right now is related to continued growth in the market indexes, which raise the value of people's 401Ks. I have a feeling that the actual performance of the economy is dragging Obama's number down, and by summer, people won't care where the Dow is. The aggrigate pain will simply be too great.

[maryrose]

RB and Ranger:
I believe you are both correct in your posts regarding the economy. I always know it is a bad report when I come home from daily Mass on a Thursday and turn on CNBC and no one is talking about the jobs report just announced 30 minutes earlier. When they pretend it is good they are shouting about it for 3 hours.

[Bruce]

Didn't notice this above, but one of the places where the report is a bit disingenuous, is that it did not separate out guns shipped at the insistence and connivance of our government, those shipped to Mexico despite the best efforts of our government to interdict, and anything in between.

In other words, part of those traced guns are apparently a result of U.S. government action, such as those going to Mexico as a result of operations like Fast & Furious and Wide Receiver. Which, some have argued was one of the big reasons for F&F in the first place.

What must also be remembered when it comes to guns in Mexico is that there is a natural preference for fully automatic weapons, esp. when we are talking standard caliber long rifles, such as M-16s and AK-47s, and all their variants. And, not surprisingly, given our gun laws, they aren't coming from the U.S. Rather, the AR variants seem to be coming in from Mexican police and military, who sell their American supplied weapons, and similarly throughout Latin America. And, the fully automatic AK variants are apparently being shipped in from the rest of the world by the shipping container load. The world is awash with these types of guns - we are talking tens of millions of these guns worldwide. And, surprise, surprise, these former Soviet block/Chinese source fully automatic AK variants don't have U.S. markings.

Indeed, the fully automatic gun trade appears to be moving in just the opposite direction - from Mexico into the U.S. All those fully automatic weapons used in the drug trade here? Being imported along with the drugs and illegal immigrants across our southern border. The later likely being one of the reasons that this trade isn't being interdicted more aggressively.

So, what is moving south across that border? My guess is high quality semi-automatic handguns, high quality AR type semi-automatics, and high caliber (.50 BMP) rifles. We could maybe see the actual breakdown if BATF/DoJ would release the breakdown, or, maybe if they were more forthcoming with Fast and Furious.