A Los Angeles Times op-ed on Thursday ran with an old Obama-era myth to blame the United States for violent gang-related gun crime in Mexico.
“Most of the weapons used by criminal groups in Mexico originate in the United States,” it claims. However, the authors twist U.S. trace data the same way the Obama administration used to do: Mexico only submits a small percentage of guns deemed traceable and recovered at crime scenes to U.S. officials for tracing. Dave Kopel detailed false claims of the origins of illegal Mexican arms in the December 2010 issue of America’s First Freedom.
The original headline, “Maybe Mexico should build a wall to keep out our guns,” (the Times later changed it to “We’re sending guns, crime to Mexico”) implies the U.S. is as much to blame for Mexico’s drug-fueled homicide as Mexico is for drug crime committed by illegal immigrant gangs in the U.S. The authors conveniently ignore the fact that Mexican drug cartels are 100 percent responsible for both.
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