Most cartel guns not from licensed dealers

Most cartel guns not from licensed dealers

Obama says that 80% of the guns that are in Mexico are from the United States. Is he correct? Not even close, it is 8%. But that doesn't stop him from outright lying to the public to further his cause to disarm the American population. Do not allow this to happen.

Video and factual article contradict each other.

Video of Obama lying AGAIN
0:58

and Article follow:





Most cartel guns not from licensed dealers


WASHINGTON — Barely 8 percent of the estimated 100,000 firearms seized in Mexico's drug wars over the past three years have been traced to U.S. sales by licensed gun dealers, Congress was told Thursday.

The finding could suggest many firearms with U.S. origins in the hands of Mexican drug cartels have been stolen or purchased at gun shows without federal record keeping.

Bill McMahon, deputy assistant director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said Mexican authorities claim to have seized an estimated 100,000 firearms from drug cartels during the offensive launched by Mexican President Felipe Calderón.

Mexican authorities submitted 20,000 of those firearms to the ATF to trace their origins, enabling the U.S. agency to determine that 90 percent of the referred weapons — or 18,000 firearms — were manufactured, imported or sold in the U.S., McMahon said.

But only 44 percent of those U.S.-origin firearms — or about 7,900 weapons — were traced back to sales by federally licensed gun dealers in the United States, McMahon told the House Committee on Homeland Security.

Tracing firearms remains “an essential component” of curtailing firearms trafficking along the Southwest border, enabling the ATF to “establish the identity of the first retail purchaser of the firearm and then investigate how the gun came to be used in a crime or how it came to be located in Mexico,” McMahon said.

More than 6,600 federally licensed firearms dealers operate along the Southwest border.

But McMahon conceded the ATF can't to trace the ownership of weapons purchased at gun shows.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., chairwoman of the House subcommittee that oversees border issues, said she hoped to find a way to honor constitutional protections for gun ownership while halting sales at gun shows without the paperwork and background checks required at licensed gun dealers.

McMahon's testimony sparked partisan divisions.

Democrats such as Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., claimed “almost all guns” in Mexico's drug wars were coming from the United States, requiring stepped-up U.S. efforts to “do something about the river of guns going into Mexico.”

But Republicans including Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, and Michael Rogers, R-Ala., emphasized that few guns seized in Mexico actually have been traced back to the United States.

McCaul noted that some military-style weapons reaching Mexican cartels via Central America were manufactured in Russia or China.

Rogers said it was “really misleading” to claim that 90 percent of guns seized in Mexico had come from the United States when “just a fraction of the weapons” can be traced back to U.S. gun dealers.

McMahon and Anthony Placido, assistant administrator for intelligence at the Drug Enforcement Administration, emphasized in response to questioning by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, that her city remains a hub for gunrunning.