Seems to me that the strongest argument anyone is making is that the statistics are flawed. But here’s what I’ll ask you in return: what if American guns *are* being smuggled over the border to Mexico and causing a lot of trouble down there? Does that at least merit *discussion*?

I’ve been driving through Baja once a year for about 10 years, with a couple of side trips through the mainland, and I’ll tell you this: every single person I talk to down there, gringo and local, thinks the guns and bullets come straight from the U.S. And I know that’s not exactly proof that they are, but its at least accepted fact to the people down there. And whether the real percentage is 100% or 40% doesn’t matter all that much to me, but it seems pretty certain that its far too high, and causing far too much damage to ignore.

I’ve only been paying attention to politics for the past 2/3 years so I’m probably speaking from a place of ignorance.  But I don’t want to conflate Foreign Aide with Military (“Defense”) spending, because they are two very different things.  Although I believe both budgets are allocated for the same reason – American Imperialism.

Agreed on the military budget and it’s hallowed status.  The US does not need 700-something foreign bases (which infringe on the laws/rights of those occupied nations) to ensure the safety/liberty of our nation.  I can’t allow our governemnt to trample the rights of other peoples in order to ‘preserve’ those same rights in our nation. Unfortunately, all of DC seems to disagree with me on that point.  Except Ron Paul anyways… but that’s a different topic :) .

ANYWAYS, the point I’m making is that in my small understanding of US national politics, I’ve never seen the R’s or the D’s suggest cutting Foreign Aide as a way to balance the budget.  Even more telling, I’ve never seen the R’s suggest cutting Foreign Aide for their usual-hate-filled reasons which they apply to other situations.  It seems to me like there is a BOUNTY of political capital to be had by the Rs in cutting Foreign Aide.  What gives?  Again, I think it’s the Imperial model that our Congress (both Ds and Rs) employs.  And I think “Dollarizing” the recipient nations of US Foreign Aide is a large part of the motivation.

Making decisions and allegiances based on headlines or inaccurate opinions is unacceptable.  This is the exact reason I left the church culture in which I was raised. We need to expound the values of logic and critical thought, anything less is immoral in my opinion.

Why is Foreign Aide never on the chopping block?

It’s always on the chopping block, unless it’s military aid, which is sacrosanct.

The only thing is, I have ZERO hope of the US ever passing another constitutional amendment.

I mean honestly, doesn’t it seem like Foreign Aide would be ripe for political capital for the Republican Party?  We are sending BILLIONS of dollars overseas to BROWN people every year – it seems to me like the Republicans in DC would be all over that as a way to cut spending and win votes.  Why is Foreign Aide never on the chopping block?

The concept of “Exporting US Dollars” would satisfy all the imperialistic tendencies of DC.  Off the top of your head, do you have any reading/research I can do on this idea?

While nobody here is qualified to evaluate the veracity of the joint ATF-Mexican Authorities report on arms tracing, every BB interloper is capable of reading said report and identifying the false claims made based upon it.

I’ll lay it out, contrast one claim with the other:
-”70% of seized guns in Mexico come from US gun stores” is a false claim, which is immediately identifiable as false if you read the report yourself.  This claim is clearly made based on inferences, not observations.

-”70% of seized guns, which were submitted for tracing to the ATF by Mexican Authorities, originated from the US” is a much stronger and more qualified statement, and is found to be true, based upon the report.  Because that’s exactly what the report said (numbers are off, I’m not looking at it right now).

This second statement leaves open a lot of qualifiers:
I. What does ‘originated in the US’ mean?
-A. For example, the US government provides the Mexican Military with it’s arms.  Combine that with the fact that over 150,000 Mexican Soldiers have deserted in the past 7 years, and you wind up with a lot of US rifles floating around the Mexican black market.  At the very least, this fact means that the original “70%” claim is based upon trash data.  And I hope you agree with me on that.
-B. Does the report discriminate between guns purchased in US guns stores and guns that the US government sold to the Mexican government?

II. What is the number of guns that were seized, but were not submitted to the ATF for tracing?
-A. Why weren’t ALL seized guns submitted to the ATF for tracing?
–1. This section alone is wide open for data manipulation, making the entire report trash data.  The joint ATF report allows for apparent discretion on the part of the ‘Mexican Authorities’ for which guns they will submit for tracing.
–2. Where did the guns which did not originate in the US come from and how did they get into Mexico?

Antinous – I hope I have laid out a neutral analysis of these claims, upon which you can agree.  This is basic logic-analysis, we aren’t talking about investigative research into the veracity of the ATF report, we are just talking about the veracity of claims made based on the data in the ATF report.

Regardless of your or my position on any issue, you don’t vet the information you receive, you assume information is correct when it fits your pre-conceived opinion, and your reasoning and arguments are flawed.

And you’ve personally witnessed the evidence and run the numbers yourself?

It’s hard to neutrally evaluate information contrary to your feelings, and it’s even harder to have a level head while you try to explain things to people on the other side of the debate.  Thanks for doing that.

Honestly, BoingBoing NEEDS to be a place where adverse ideas can be discussed and evaluated, and I expect nothing less from the readership.

Whether or not the NRA has talked about the points eggmasterj wrote has no bearing whatsoever on the veracity of those points.  Although the way you phrased that sentence sounds like you’re trying to discredit eggmasterj’s statements by intimating they have some relation to a widely reviled organization.  That, however, is not a valid argument.

>For example, here’s a wiki article that puts the percentage of U.S.
> weapons seized in Mexico at more like 70% of the total.

The sentence in that Wikipedia article you’re referencing itself references an AFP article which repeats numbers mentioned in dozens, if not hundreds, of news articles, which leads me to part of another comment of yours further down this page,

> And there are hundreds of articles discussing American over-the-
> counter arms making their way down to Mexico.

This is another logical fallacy called bandwagoning.  It means that a lot of people saying the same thing doesn’t mean that thing is factually correct.  In the case of the AFP article, the numbers mentioned are correct as far as I know, but the words used around them by almost every article I’ve read mis-represent the original ATF statement, which said,

“…of the 94,000 guns submitted for tracing which were successfully traced, 64,000 were traced to the United States.”

The words and phrasing in that AFP article suggests that the ATF is saying at least 64,000 guns came from straw purchases at U.S. gun stores, but the ATF’s statement doesn’t actually say that:

“Of the 94,000 guns submitted for tracing…” means that more than 94,000 guns were retrieved by Mexican authorities.  Some of those may have come from the U.S. and simply weren’t submitted for tracing, but we actually have no idea what proportion of the total those 94,000 are – it could be 100% or it could be 0.001%.

“…64,000 were traced to the United States.”  Which, largely due to phrasing in news articles, a lot of people assume means those guns were purchased at U.S. gun stores and smuggled to cartels in Mexico.  However, the statement doesn’t actually say that.  A gun bought in a U.S. gun store and illegally smuggled into Mexico does fit that statement, but so does a gun sold legally by the U.S. government to the Mexican government that then made its way to criminals also fits that statement.  In fact, any number of scenarios could be represented by that statement, only one of which is the one you assume it means.

Regardless of your or my position on any issue, you don’t vet the information you receive, you assume information is correct when it fits your pre-conceived opinion, and your reasoning and arguments are flawed.

Here’s a Wikipedia article that you might find useful:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_fallacies

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL32842.pdf

Being “…poorly thought-out BS” is not at all the most likely explanation.

Iran currently is trying to accept euro payments for crude, this is problem, and we have been making a fuss about them.

Iraq began accepting other currency for oil payments, you know what happened. 

The drug war is small potatoes compared to oil. 

Edit: It is also possible that some weapons submitted are models that are known to be sold in the US but have had serial numbers, place-of-origin markings, or other identifying information obliterated from the frame. Obviously, it would be futile to attempt to trace these.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, 70% of the weapons seized in Mexico that are submitted to the ATF for tracing are determined to have originated in the United States. This sounds like a lot, but the Mexican authorities only submit weapons that are marked properly for sale in the US (i.e. guns that bear a place-of-origin rollmark from an American manufacturer or importer.)

So, according to you, Mexico only sends the ATF guns that originated in the US, and then the ATF determines that 70% of these actually originated in the US?  If the Mexicans are so bad at determining which guns originated in the US, then clearly they are also not submitting to the ATF a significant number of arms that did originate in the US.

The most likely explanation of this phenomenon, though, is that your post is poorly thought-out BS.

Other than that – so what? You can’t predict what will happen to guns once they are sold. Should you just profile and not sell to Hispanics in the Southwest? If not, then there isn’t a whole lot you can do against straw purchases or people who wouldn’t be flagged by the ATF background check.

Also – as someone else pointed out – machine guns are very hard and very expensive to come by in the with extra ATF checks. Any illegal machine guns most likely were not from the US.

Anyways, the red pills are the only chemicals I endorse, because they help you unhook from The Matrix :)

In any case, can’t we agree that the cartels would have less resources to replenish their arsenal if the United States wasn’t such a lucrative market to sell their ‘products’?

And there are hundreds of articles discussing American over-the-counter arms making their way down to Mexico.

Edit: And here’s an interesting article about the influence the NRA has over the ATF, so I’m not sure their statistics are as trustworthy as you hope.