Stop the presses

Man goes to gun show, legally buys guns.

That's the event television "news" magazine 20/20 recently presented as one of their hard-hitting investigative tours de force.

In what basically amounted to a propaganda piece and which was certainly not an example of independent journalism, the producers of the show equipped a brother of one of the Virginia Tech shooting victims with $5,000, and then filmed him as he legally bought weapons at a gun show in Richmond. Where's the news in that?

The announced reason for the segment was to supposedly outline the dangers of the gun show "loophole", even though no such thing exists, as we've repeatedly pointed out in previous posts.

In addition (and more to the point of this specific story), the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre legally bought his weapons through a Federally-licensed gun shop, passing all mandated checks, and not a gun show, making this hit piece even more nonsensical and completely unrelated to what actually happened on the campus that tragic day. We suppose having the brother go to a gun store, filling out paperwork and being subjected to an instant-backround check wasn't considered "sexy" enough for the newsies, even though that's exactly what the shooter had to go through in order to obtain his weapons.

"In fact, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) reports in their investigations that private sellers at gun shows are a major source of gun crime in the country."

In all honesty, we wouldn't believe the ATF if they called and told us the sky outside was blue and that water runs downhill. Our skepticism of that agency was only just recently reinforced by the discovery of the ATF's creative fudging of statistics, in that they loudly claimed that 90% of all guns used in crimes in Mexico were found to have been purchased in the U.S. and illegally smuggled into that country. In fact, the number is actually more like 17%, as this Fox News story notes:

"William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that 'there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States.'"

Oh, really?

After some began to question that statement, the truth slowly began oozing out:

"What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, 'is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S.'

But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S." (All emphases mine)

Meaning such items as the fully-automatic rifles, grenades and rocket launchers that are usually featured in the standard video backgrounds used when these misleading reports air.

So, if Mexico were to only submit ten firearms out of 10,000 for tracing, and nine of those ten came back as being from the U.S., then the U.S. is still ninety percent responsible overall, according to Mr. Hoover's math. He seems to be about as effective in a law-enforcement role as his similarly-named colleague J. Edgar was in his.

17% is admittedly not a shining number, and that percentage can and should be reduced not only by enforcing current federal and state laws, but also by the firearm-owning community policing their own members. But that percentage is not 90%, nor is it even close to a majority, which means that law-abiding American gun owners by an overwhelming margin are not causing or exacerbating Mexico's problems, despite the ATF's "incorrect" (to be generous) assertion.

As usual, Mexico is Mexico's main problem, and that fact will continue to be true until the thoroughly corrupt government down there gets bounced out once and for all.