Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
While the percentage of Mexican criminal firepower supposedly attributable to the U.S. civilian gun market continues to fall, U.S. gun shops (and gun shows) are still supposedly on the hook for 70% of recovered Mexican "crime guns" (at one time, the figure being tossed around was "95-100% "--a figure that steadily dropped as it became indefensible). That the "70%" figure refers not to the total number of seized guns, but to the percentage of those submitted to, and successfully traced by, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), is generally ignored. The fact that according to the Mexican newspaper El Universal , fewer than a quarter of the recovered firearms were traced , meaning that fewer than 16% of the total number of recovered firearms can be traced to the U.S., is definitely ignored.