The BS-O-Meter is on the Fritz Again

He muffed his statement; the U.S. guns were involved in Mexican crimes, not necessarily drug trafficking. But officials in both governments say U.S. -sourced guns make up a large proportion of guns carried by drug traffickers. 

We rate Moran’s statement Mostly True. [More]

Why, because the Obama and Calderon administrations say so?  Geez, that's some media watchdog keeping an eye on things for us.

Actually, even with their dropping the old lie and admitting that these are guns submitted for tracing, the way this is presented still helps mislead readers into into drawing unwarranted conclusions. There are other factors not mentioned that need to be considered to view things in their proper perspective.

For instance, some of us have documented in the past that guns submitted for tracing account for only a small fraction of total guns seized, and how only about a third of those submitted guns came from U.S. dealers.

And in a report that factors in government sales and non-civilian ordnance, Stratfor concludes:

[T]he 3,480 guns positively traced to the United States equals less than 12 percent of the total arms seized in Mexico in 2008 and less than 48 percent of all those submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF for tracing. This means that almost 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico in 2008 were not traced back to the United States.

That's hardly "a large proportion."

Yet once again, our anti-gun pal Rep. Moron and his lickspittle camp followers at the Orwellian-named "Politifact" have buried the needle on the old BS-O-Meter.  Maybe all that overload is why they keep breaking the damn thing...

[Via Mack H]