Counting Mexico's Guns

The Myth of 17 Percent
According to a Fox News report, titled "The Myth of 90 Percent," only "17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S." But the 17 percent figure is a myth, too. The reporters made some mistaken assumptions about how many guns had actually been traced to U.S. sources.

Fox News reporters William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott note, quite correctly, that Mexico doesn't submit all the guns it recovers to the U.S. for tracing. Furthermore, Fox News reported, this is "because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S." And it quoted a law enforcement official as to why:

Fox News, April 2: "Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market," Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.

If that's true, then the guns given to ATF for tracing constitute a badly biased sample of all crime guns seized in Mexico. But the ATF officials we contacted don't confirm that. What an ATF spokesperson would say is that the agency could trace more than 90 percent of all the guns submitted by Mexico to the U.S. – they either originated in this country or were imported here before heading south.

However that may be, the Fox figure of 17 percent is based on a misreading of some confusing House subcommittee testimony by ATF official William Newell. The Fox reporters come up with a figure of 5,114 guns traced to U.S. sources in fiscal 2007 and 2008. That figures to 17.6 percent of the 29,000 figure for guns seized in Mexico, as given by the country's attorney general.

The 5,114 figure is simply wrong. What Newell said quite clearly is that the number of guns submitted to ATF in those two years was 11,055: "3,312 in FY 2007 [and] 7,743 in FY 2008." Newell also testified, as other ATF officials have done, that 90 percent of the guns traced were determined to have come from the U.S. So based on Newell's testimony, the Fox reporters should have used a figure of 9,950 guns from U.S. sources. That figures out to just over 34 percent of guns recovered, assuming that the 29,000 figure supplied by Mexico's attorney general is correct.

Even that number is too low. At our request, an ATF spokesman gave us more detailed figures for how many guns had been submitted and traced during those two years. Of the guns seized in Mexico and given to ATF for tracing, the agency actually found 95 percent came from U.S. sources in fiscal 2007 and 93 percent in fiscal 2008. That comes to a total of 10,347 guns from U.S. sources for those two years, or 36 percent of what Mexican authorities say they recovered.

The mistake the Fox News reporters made was to focus on some numbers given by Newell and Hoover in separate testimony, regarding numbers of guns traced to specific states. But not all guns traced to the U.S. can be traced to specific states. The Fox numbers are "a subset" of the actual total traced to U.S. sources, one official said.

An Elusive Number
Given the lack of hard data from Mexico, we can't calculate a precise figure for what portion of crime guns have been traced to the U.S. Based on the best evidence we can find so far, we conclude that the 90 percent claim made by the president and others in his administration lacks a basis in solid fact. But we also conclude that the number is at least double what Fox News has reported, based on its reporters' mistaken interpretation of ATF testimony.

Whether the number is 90 percent, or 36 percent, or something else, there's no dispute that thousands of guns are being illegalIy transported into Mexico by way of the United States each year.