Friday, October 1, 2010

More Anti-Math

Dennis "I Forgot the People" Henigan is touting a report saying it's all those nasty gun shows and 'assault weapons' in the US that are causing Mexican violence. But, as usual, the numbers don't add up.

The claim:
75,000 firearms seized by the Mexican government in the last three years, about 80%, or 60,000 firearms, came from the United States.
From the report:
Mexico has seized more than 85,000 total firearms from the start of the Calderon Administran
50,000 are AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles
That would be an average of 21,250 thousand guns per year.

But:
individuals illegally transferred an estimated 14,923 U.S. firearms to Mexico from FY 2005 to FY 2009.
That's an average of about 3700 per year. About ten per day in the thousands of vehicles and people that cross the border every day legally and illegally.

So it would have taken over twenty years to have 'trafficked' all those guns, most of which was during the Clinton AWB. Plus you have the fact that they claim 5x the number of guns being confiscated than are being brought in. You would think that over the last four years, there would have been a reduction in crime w/ such successful police work.

So Dennis is, as usual, full of crap.

SIH has more.

UPDATE: Turns out one of the actual authors of the report are upset they're being called on their crap research and are being shown their @sses. In comments (posted for him or here on his site) 45 Superman shows one of them how research is done.


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4 comments:

Kurt '45superman' Hofmann said...

I made an observation:

Says Henigagn: "Huge numbers of guns are involved. According to a new report, U.S. Firearms Trafficking to Mexico, by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the University of San Diego Trans-Border Institute, of 75,000 firearms seized by the Mexican government in the last three years, about 80%, or 60,000 firearms, came from the United States."

Wrong. If you read the report itself, and then check the footnoted references, you will find that the report derives its "80%" figure from this Washington Post article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/20/AR2010052002911.html

What that article says is quite different: "Calderón said his government had seized 75,000 guns in Mexico in a three-year period and found that 80 percent of those whose origin could be traced were bought in the United States."

80% "OF THOSE WHOSE ORIGIN COULD BE TRACED."

Quite a difference. The sleight of hand of ignoring the "whose origin could be traced" part has from the beginning been a key component of the strategy of those who want to use Mexican crime to justify yet more restrictive gun laws in the U.S.


One of the authors of the "report" Dennis cited challenged my assertions:

Dear 45superman,

I beg to differ. I am one of the authors of the report you refer to and know first hand. If you check the other source the author gives, from the Washington Times, it says more directly that of the 75,000 firearms seized around 80 percent of them came from the United States. In addition, I have heard from several ATF officials and other U.S. government officials that the 60,000 figure (total amount of U.S.-origin firearms seized by Mexico from 2007 to 2009) I use is fairly accurate. The reason ATF knows this is that Mexico has been providing a lot more firearm trace requests. As of May 2010, ATF had information on 69,808 firearms recovered in Mexico from 2007 to 2009, which is tens of thousands of firearms more than it had information on as of June 2009. While it's important to continue ask ATF for exact data, it's also important to fully recognize that Mexican DTOs are using U.S.-origin firearms on a massive scale and something needs to be done to stop their easy access to firearms in the United States.

Colby Goodman


Um . . . not so fast (modified to correct a bad link):

Mr. Goodman, I stand by my original contention. The Washington Times seems to have used less carefully accurate wording than the Washington Post (in that the Post included the "of those that can be traced" qualifier, and the Times did not).

I have ascertained this by going to the text of President Caldeón's address itself: http://bit.ly/coXs8m

There, we find this: "Just to give you an idea, we have seized 75,000 guns and assault weapons in Mexico in the last 3 years, and more than 80 percent of those we have been able to trace came from the United States."

As for your anecdotes about what you "have heard from several ATF officials and other U.S. government officials," come back to me about what they say under oath.

Thirdpower said...

From 45Superman:

I made an observation:

Says Henigagn: "Huge numbers of guns are involved. According to a new report, U.S. Firearms Trafficking to Mexico, by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the University of San Diego Trans-Border Institute, of 75,000 firearms seized by the Mexican government in the last three years, about 80%, or 60,000 firearms, came from the United States."

Wrong. If you read the report itself, and then check the footnoted references, you will find that the report derives its "80%" figure from this Washington Post article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/20/AR2010052002911.html

What that article says is quite different: "Calderón said his government had seized 75,000 guns in Mexico in a three-year period and found that 80 percent of those whose origin could be traced were bought in the United States."

80% "OF THOSE WHOSE ORIGIN COULD BE TRACED."

Quite a difference. The sleight of hand of ignoring the "whose origin could be traced" part has from the beginning been a key component of the strategy of those who want to use Mexican crime to justify yet more restrictive gun laws in the U.S.


One of the authors of the "report" Dennis cited challenged my assertions:

Dear 45superman,

I beg to differ. I am one of the authors of the report you refer to and know first hand. If you check the other source the author gives, from the Washington Times, it says more directly that of the 75,000 firearms seized around 80 percent of them came from the United States. In addition, I have heard from several ATF officials and other U.S. government officials that the 60,000 figure (total amount of U.S.-origin firearms seized by Mexico from 2007 to 2009) I use is fairly accurate. The reason ATF knows this is that Mexico has been providing a lot more firearm trace requests. As of May 2010, ATF had information on 69,808 firearms recovered in Mexico from 2007 to 2009, which is tens of thousands of firearms more than it had information on as of June 2009. While it's important to continue ask ATF for exact data, it's also important to fully recognize that Mexican DTOs are using U.S.-origin firearms on a massive scale and something needs to be done to stop their easy access to firearms in the United States.

Colby Goodman


Um . . . not so fast (modified to correct a bad link):

Mr. Goodman, I stand by my original contention. The Washington Times seems to have used less carefully accurate wording than the Washington Post (in that the Post included the "of those that can be traced" qualifier, and the Times did not).

I have ascertained this by going to the text of President Caldeón's address itself: http://bit.ly/coXs8m

There, we find this: "Just to give you an idea, we have seized 75,000 guns and assault weapons in Mexico in the last 3 years, and more than 80 percent of those we have been able to trace came from the United States."

As for your anecdotes about what you "have heard from several ATF officials and other U.S. government officials," come back to me about what they say under oath.

Kurt '45superman' Hofmann said...

Thanks for posting the comment. I really did kinda forget I'm a blogger ;-).

Guess I need to get back to it.

Kurt '45superman' Hofmann said...

By the way, Colby Goodman, one of the report's authors, with whom I had the little exchange above, is not new to "gun control" issues, and clearly isn't writing from a position of scholarly detachment.

Colby Goodman is a member of the Military, Security, and Police Working Group at Amnesty International USA. Previously, he was the Program Manager of the Child Soldiers and Arms Transfers Program. As the Program Manager, he led AIUSA’s research and advocacy on issues related to child soldiers, arms control, and related human rights issues.

Before joining AIUSA, Mr. Goodman was a Research Assistant with the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch where he researched cases of arms brokers from Eastern Europe and cases of irresponsible and illegal arms transfers by sea vessels for a ground-breaking report on the scope of this problem. Prior to that, he was a Legislative Aide with U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, working on defense and foreign policy issues.

At Amnesty, Mr. Goodman has been a lead advocate in several United Nations conferences on small arms issues and has been quoted in various national and international media such as the New York Times, National Public Radio, and Al-Jazeera on the global arms trade or child soldiers. He holds a Master’s degree in International Policy Studies with a focus on international development and security from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.