Illegal Trafficking of Firearms to Mexico

Figures don't lie but liars figure could be the subject of this post.  I became alarmed reading a report in a Mexican newspaper that as many as 2,000 guns per day were crossing the US border.  Then there are many news reports suggesting  250,000 firearms illegally crossing to Mexico each year.  There are oft-repeated claims that the United States is responsible for 90% of the guns seized in Mexico and by implication 90% of all the guns used by Mexican drug cartels.  The truth is that none of these claims are true.

Although I poke holes in a lot of the data floating around in the media, I conclude (and I am an NRA member) at the end of this article that expanded background checks should be implemented to discourage straw purchasers of firearms transferring guns to illegal exporters.  I am still opposed to magazine restrictions and restrictions on so-called assault weapons.


Let's take the claim that 90% of all firearms seized in Mexico came from the US.  This figure is based on a GAO study(see page 20 of GAO Report) that alleges that the ATF determined that 87% of the guns that they traced from Mexico were of US Origin.  STRATFOR (See this article) reported that this number, 87%, came about by parsing the ATF data.  That is, of 7,200 trace requests submitted to the ATF in 2008, only around 4,000 could be traced and of these, 3,480, or 87%, traced to the United States in Origin or legitimately imported into the US.  Anyone with 8th grade math skills can conclude that 3,480 is far less than 87% of 7,200.  If this were not bad enough, page 21 of the same report says that the Mexican Government seized some 30,000 firearms in 2008.  The 3,480 traced guns then drop to less than 12% of the total.  Liars figure or idiots cherry-pick their quotes.

The actual ATF trace data for Mexico data is available for the years 2007-2012 (See the ATF report here). When you look at the hard data, you will see that only 65.5% of the firearms recovered in Mexico were found to be US-sourced (US manufacture or legally imported into the US).  Of these, 38% were traced to a retail purchaser.  The data for other years was similar although the percentage traced to a retail purchaser appears to be increasing.   Again, we see that the hard data does not agree with the 90% claim and recall that the ATF trace requests represent only a fraction of the firearms seized in Mexico.

One interesting thing is that the ATF data for 2008 does not look like the data in the GAO report.  This is because the ATF groups data into what they call the year of recovery.  So, the 2008 data is the data for guns recovered (seized) in 2008, not the number of 2008 requests.  For example, if a trace was not originated until 2013 for a gun seized in 2008, the data is lumped with 2008 data.  This means that the total numbers for 2008 will go up over time.  The GAO report and the STRATFOR article all are based on 2008 data available in 2009.

From where did the 250,000 estimated number of illegal exported guns come?  ATF data?  NO!  It came from a 'study' or estimate made by four (4) Phd's associated with the Trans Border Institute (TBI), an organization sponsored by the University of San Diego (See the TBI Report here).  I won't pick on their conclusions because California is one of the bluest states in the union or because most universities are a hotbed of leftist thinking.  I will say that their 'report' gives great lip service to attempting to estimate the demand for guns that is served by legitimate FFL's (Federal Firearms Licencees).  If you only read the words, the report looks reasonable.  If you look at the actual data they report, there are a lot of gaps that do not allow sufficient checking (my opinion).  At a minimum, the paper does not appear to have been widely peer-reviewed prior to news organizations jumping on the data.  Also, their final number is supposedly based on 2.2% of all US firearms purchases.  If I track the actual ATF data for the years between 2007 and 2011, all that is available, for firearms manufactured in the US and with an estimate for the number imported, I come up with far fewer firearms than the 253,000 that they reported in their conclusions.

ATF Data on United States Manufactured and Estimated U.S. Imports for 2007 - 2012

So, even if I accepted the analysis in the TBI report, which I do not, the number cannot be anywhere near the 253,000 firearms suggested by the authors.  There are other problems with the high number of estimated smuggled firearms.  For example, of the total number of ATF traces, only 38%-46% were traceable to a retail purchaser.  If we take 46% of the total manufactured and imported and use the 2.2% number of the TBI report, the 2011 number drops to 88,298.  If we assume that the TBI number is valid and assign a number of firearms (14 based on one ATF investigation) to each straw purchaser, 253,000 illegal firearms means there are 18,071 new felons each year trafficking in guns.  This seems unreasonable to me.

An unconservative estimate based on ATF data for the 2007-2011 period would be that the number of firearms traced to US origin represents a fraction of the total.  For example, the 2008 trace data, which should now be stable, shows 21,184 firearms recovered in 2008 and traced to the United States.  If we assume that the number recovered and traced represents only 20% of the total, we would estimate 105,920 firearms were illegally exported to Mexico in 2008.  Conversely, If I use the TBI percentage of 2.2%, I would come up with 126,139 firearms (see above).   That would say that the traced firearms represents only 17% of the total.  Looking at it this way, the TBI 2.2% estimate is not too much off our 20% estimate.  The key is using 2.2% and not 253,000.

Even if we don't accept the TBI conclusions exactly, there are substantial numbers of firearms being transferred through our border with Mexico every year.  This makes me conclude that we and the NRA should support some kind of expanded background check for private transfers of firearms.  Such a law would need to be funded so that the existing NICS check system is not overloaded and would have to be convenient for private sellers.  Some kind of fee system would have to be established and sufficient numbers of FFL's should be consulted prior to burdening them with any new requirements.  Many FFL's will do the NICS checks for purchasers of out-of-state firearms today.