REPORT: 70 percent of arms seized, traced in Mexico came from US

According to a recent ATF report 70 percent of guns seized in Mexico and submitted to a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Fire Arms gun tracking program came from the United States.

The Washington Post has the full story here:

Of the 29,284 firearms recovered by authorities in Mexico in 2009 and 2010, 20,504 came from the United States, according to figures provided to the senators by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Further breaking out the numbers:

  • Most of those weapons — 15,131 — were U.S. made, while another 5,373 were of foreign manufacture but had moved through the United States into Mexico.
  • The ATF said the remainder of the weapons total — 8,780 arms — were of “undetermined origin due to insufficient information provided.”
  • The figure of the number of guns arriving in Mexico from north of the border has been polemical ever since a June 2009 U.S. report covering earlier years said that 87 percent of guns seized in Mexico came from the United States.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon an outspoken critic of American guns in Mexico called for a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban:

“I accuse the U.S. weapons industry of (responsibility for) the deaths of thousands of people that are occurring in Mexico,” Calderon said. “It is for profit, for the profits that it makes for the weapons industry.”

Calderon endorsed calls for reinstating the ban on domestic sales of assault rifles, saying its expiration in 2004 may have played a roll in the increase of drug violence in Mexico.