Newsweek Pushes Anti-Gun Agenda With Fake Gun Tracking Numbers

In an article published by Newsweek on August 7, 2024, Dan Gooding AND Billal Rahman make a number of inflammatory claims. From the article:

Immigration to the United States is driven in part by gun violence, which in turn is fueled by firearms purchased in the U.S. and illegally transported to Mexico by organized crime networks.

More than 200,000 Recent data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) shows that firearms seized in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico between 2015 and 2022 have been linked to the U.S.

The number 200,000 seemed interesting. This correspondent went to the ATF website to see the original ATF data on traces. The ATF website provides links to traces of Central America and Mexico. The data are given by year for Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Panama. Only seven years of data are given for Nicaragua. For Mexico, the data are linked to five-year aggregates, but the total for each year is given. It is not difficult to determine how many firearms were found to come from the United States each year. The data is divided into several categories. A major division is US Sourced Firearms and Undetermined Source Country for Firearms.

Using the ATF data, the total number of firearms produced in the U.S. was calculated for the period 2015 through 2022. The results are as follows:

• Belize – 285
• Costa Rica – 65
• El Salvador – 6,954
• Guatemala – 5,913
• Honduras – 1,989
• Panama1,921
• Nicaragua – (only mentioned for 7 years) 17

The total traceable to the United States for El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras for the eight years 2015-2022 was 14,856. The total for Mexico for the eight years 2015-2022 was 105,943. Combine them and the total traceable to the United States is 120,799. This is a long way from “over 200,000.”

The links to data in the article go to an advocacy site, stopusarmstomexico.org. From the site, this chart with numbers can be found:

The problem is easy to spot. These are trace data numbers, not source origin data. The total from USA is only 120,799. Another 72,413 are from unknown countries/sources. There may be other numbers in the total traces that could make up the difference of about 7,000.

Total traces are not all traces traced to the United States. In El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, the number of unknown origins is considerably higher than that of American origin. For those three countries, the unknown is 60% of the total. For Mexico, the unknown is 32% of the total.

Traces are not actual firearms that are available. For example, it is impossible to know how many weapons have been diverted before they are traced. This correspondent has heard many stories that indicate that many weapons that are seized are rarely entered into official records.

The numbers don’t matter to the argument being made. They’re used to get attention. To people who aren’t familiar with gun ownership statistics in the United States and around the world, 100,000 or 200,000 seems like a lot.

Put that number in perspective. There are more than 500 million privately owned firearms in the United States. In eight years, approximately 120,799 were returned to the United States from four countries south of the Mexican border, or about 15,000 firearms returned to the United States per year. About 0.003 percent of the U.S. stockpile can be traced to a U.S. origin from four countries south of the border, while the U.S. privately owned stockpile is growing by more than 15 million per year.

The stockpile of U.S. private weapons is growing 1,000 times faster than the number of firearms seized from the four countries south of the border and traced to the U.S.

The argument from stoparmstomexico.org and Newsweek essentially boils down to this:

1. Guns are bad.
2. The more weapons, the more evil.
3. More bad news south of the border, more people fleeing to the US
4. That’s why the Second Amendment forces people to come to the US.

Readers can spot the logical error.

If people are fleeing their country because of the increase in guns, why are they fleeing to a country with thousands of times more guns than their own?

A counterargument is that guns are not bad. The unequal distribution of weapons causes the problems. In countries south of the border, when there are only small groups of people, such as government agents or criminal gangs (sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between the two, as in Haiti), there is a power imbalance between the people and the government.

People flee the oppression that comes from such power differentials. Many people south of the border envy the freedom to keep and bear arms, which is protected by the Second Amendment.

About Dean Weingarten:

Dean Weingarten is a peace officer, a military veteran, served on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona Confidence Carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was achieved. He holds degrees in meteorology and mining engineering and is retired from the Department of Defense after a 30-year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.