djaburg

"On October 13, the Associated Press reported that the so-called Bi-National Task Force on Rethinking the United States-Mexico Border has produced a report, which, among other things, calls for re-imposition of the federal “assault weapon” ban of 1994-2004, saying it would improve security in both countries.

The “border-rethinking” group has been put together by the Pacific Council on International Policy and the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations. The group consists mostly of former U.S. and Mexican officials and journalists, none of them currently elected by the people of the U.S. or Mexico to make policy on these issues.

According to the Pacific Council, the report is being released under the auspices of the Mexican CFR on November 13th and is absolutely unavailable until that time. The Brady Campaign, naturally, has a copy of the report anyway, and quotes its executive summary as saying “The United States should intensify efforts to curtail the smuggling of firearms, ammunition, and bulk cash into Mexico by aggressively investigating gun sellers, regulating gun shows, [and] reinstituting the Clinton-era ban on assault weapons.”

Congress finished its hearings on the Mexico situation several months ago, and many members of Congress have declared their line-in-the-sand opposition to re-imposition of the ban. So given that Brady Campaign seems to be the only outfit that has a copy of the embargoed report, it’s safe to conclude that the “task force” is trying to keep the public primed for the next attack on the ownership of firearms like the AR-15 and Remington 11-87, and ammunition magazines designed for defensive purposes.

Whatever the opinions of those who sip tea and nibble biscuits while musing about how to restrict the rest of us, re-imposing the ban would have no effect on Mexico’s historic problem of crime and corruption, for at least three reasons.

First, as has been amply demonstrated, the cartels are not limited to semi-automatic AR-15s and AK-47s. They have hand-held and tripod-mounted, belt-fed machine guns; grenade launchers and grenades; and a variety of other high-end firearms, explosives, and special-purpose optics and communication gear acquired from countries other than the United States. Thanks to some Americans’ insatiable appetite for mind-altering drugs, they have enough money to buy the “task force” 10 times over, along with any weapon that can be found among any infantry platoon on Earth, no matter what kind of gun law gets imposed.

Second, most of the firearms seized from the cartels do not come from the United States. The claim that “90 percent” of Mexican "crime guns" originate in the U.S. is false. It does not relate to all firearms the Mexicans have seized from the cartels, but only to guns that the Mexicans have asked the BATFE to trace. As the Government Accountability Office has explained, “In 2008, of the almost 30,000 firearms that the Mexican Attorney General’s office said were seized, only around 7,200, or approximately a quarter, were submitted to [BATFE] for tracing.” The 6,700 guns that BATFE traced to the U.S. accounted for about 90 percent of the 7,200 guns that BATFE traced, but only 22 percent of all firearms seized by the Mexican government

Third, the ban did not stop the production and sale of any guns, it merely put a one-attachment limit on new guns. For example, before the ban, AR-15s had a pistol-type grip, flash suppressor and bayonet mount. The 750,000 AR-15s made during the ban had only the grip. If the “task force” thinks the fate of Mexico hinges on whether a relatively small number of semi-automatic rifles have flash suppressors and bayonet mounts, its members ought to switch to decaffeinated tea and sugar-free cookies during their get-togethers.

Make no mistake, however. Even if the “task force” doesn’t understand the finer details of the old “assault weapon” ban, leading gun ban advocates like Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, the Brady Campaign, the Violence Policy Center, the Joyce Foundation, and the Legal Community Against Violence do. If they have their way, they will eventually drag us into a much larger battle over the right to keep and bear semi-automatic shotguns, M1 Garands, M1 Carbines, and Ruger Mini-14s, in addition to the AR-15s, semi-automatic AK-47s, and other commonly owned firearms that were at issue during the 1994-2004 ban."

Drew1369

Yes because it worked SOOO well before right?

yustr

I take no position in this but this quote is clearly written by someone illiterate in math and statistics. I'll boil it down:

There were 30K weapons seized.
The government asked BATFE to trace their origin.
A sample set was selected for this purpose: size 6,700 or 22%.
Of those sampled - 90% came from the US.

If that sample set was a true random set, they can say that they're 99.9999% sure that 90% guns seized in Mexico came from the US. (A sample of only 17 guns would have given about 95% certainty and 53 would have given 99%. I'm a little fuzzy on this as its been some years but I think this is correct.)

So believe what you will but don’t quote the ignorant.

Jason

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/counting-mexicos-guns/

djaburg

There's an interesting point in that article. It stated that the only weapons the Mexican government submitted to the BATFE for tracking are those weapons they suspect of originating in the US, and of those, 90% were, if the reports are correct. So if that's the case and we are generous with the numbers, they submitted less than 25% of their stated 30,000+ weapons, and those were the one's they suspected of coming from the US. Even if we round up the number from the US to 30% of the total, then 70% are NOT from the US, which certainly is no where near the misrepresented number of 90% from the US.

Jason

I agree. I do not think either of the numbers 17% or 90% are correct. But it will not stop either side. Maybe if we do a better job of securing our borders that it would help solve the problem.

grimx133

As the old saying goes, there are three types of lies.

Lies, dam lies, and statistics.

yustr

Not to belabor the point but this proves that Factcheck.org is illiterate in statistics too. The point being that it is not necessary to trace every gun to determine a trend; a surprisingly small sample, if selected properly, can give a very precise figure.

djaburg

You are correct given ONE major criteria, RANDOM SAMPLE. In this particular case the sample was not random. It was a controlled sample, not random so the analysis cannot be extrapolated to the whole.

yustr

Agree. What it really says is that 90% of the guns we though were from the US actually were. Still no reason to sample such a large number. I wonder who paid? No, actually I don't.

djaburg

You could argue two ways. The first is those in favor of gun control specifically controlled the study to emphasize their point. The second would be those who sought to disprove the allegation that most of the guns came from here. I would tend to speculate it was the first scenario since it's the anti-gun folks that are tooting that horn.

MichaelTech

Good point. Those in favor of things, will skew any findings in their favor just to support their agenda. Secure borders? Ha! Every point of entry, planes, busses, autos, trains, all need metal detectors to even get off the vehicle. How much "Big Brother" are you willing to put up with? Skewed facts are easy to spot. Look at who uses them.