ZOMG!!!! - Mexican Gun Canard on NPR

NPR is trying to resurrect the Mexican Gun Canard now. There was a segment on today's Morning Edition claiming two-thirds of the guns seized from the Mexican drug gangs are traced to the US. Not even two-thirds of guns traced, just an absolute two-thirds. They didn't even slip it in quietly, like most MSM reports have done.

Remember, to kill a zombie, you have to destroy the brain.

[Edit: Maybe we should see if Robb can do a graphic for this. I'm picturing a zombie in a sombrero holding an AK-47, maybe standing on a mountain of "assault" rifles.]

The Mexican Gun Canard Rises Again

We thought it had died, as it should. But like a zombie, it's lifeless corpse keeps rising from the grave. Yet another example at the Roanoke Times:

Legal gun sales in this country facilitate this illicit trade.

According to federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives data collected over the past three years, more than 90 percent of firearms traced after being seized in Mexico are from the United States.

It's hardly a mystery where many of them come from. The ATF agent in charge of its Houston division noted in a New York Times story in April there are about 1,500 licensed gun dealers in that area alone.

No mention of the fact that 90 percent of firearms traced is not 90 percent of firearms seized. That little fact is not mentioned, and left for the observant reader to figure out on his own - probably in the hope that the majority of readers won't notice it.

No mention of the fact that it doesn't make economical sense for the Mexican drug gangs to find someone who can pass the background check who would be willing to do a straw purchase, and front the approximately $800-$1000 the average "assault weapon" costs at a legitimate dealer, when they can send someone to their south and buy the same weapon for only a couple of hundred dollars on the black market there.

No mention of how many of the weapons traced to the US were sold to the Mexican government, or another South American government first. (How many governments or revolutionary movements did we prop up during the Cold War, anyway?)

This was an editorial, so there's not the obligation to present an unbiased summary, but this smacks of a deliberate twisting of the facts. Even in an editorial, this is irresponsible and unethical behavior for a newspaper that wants to claim journalistic integrity.

Something we tend to forget

Atom Smasher over at Men are Not Potatoes mentions something that tends to get forgotten in the 2nd Amendment debate.

"I think the Framers would have been far more comfortable with the locals having an Abrams and a Mark 19 and an F-22 than with the government having one. Hell - they didn't even want a standing army, let alone one that could run roughshod over the citizenry." [emphasis mine]

That's important to remember when someone throws out the old "it only applies to the militia" argument. The founders did not want a standing army. This is mentioned in many of the constitutions of the original 13 states. For example, Section I, Article 13 of the Virginia Constitution:

"That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state, therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power." [emphasis mine]

The founders had a deep distrust of standing armies, and they didn't want one - they wanted a militia made up of ordinary citizens, that could organize into an army if a war occurred, because they knew it a militia made up of the people could not be easily turned against the people.

So why would they restrict the right to keep and bear arms to a select few in a standing military?

(On another note, Men Are Not Potatoes has been added to my blogroll. Welcome!)