Newsweek Publishes Error on Gun Trace Numbers, Pushes "Guns are Bad" Theory

Autodefensa in Mexico. Notice the number of shotguns and .22 rifles, most of which probably came from the United States.

In an article published by Newsweek on August 7, 2024, Dan Gooding AND Billal Rahman make some incendiary claims. From the article:

Immigration into the United States is being partly driven by gun violence — which itself is fueled by firearms bought in the U.S. and illegally transported back to Mexico by organized crime networks.

Over 200,000 firearms found in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico between 2015 and 2022 were linked back to the U.S., recent data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) shows.

The 200,000 number seemed interesting. This correspondent went to the ATF website to look at the original data from the ATF on traces.  At the ATF website, links are provided for traces for Central America and for Mexico. The data is given by year for Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama. Only seven years data is given for Nicaragua. For Mexico the data is linked to five year aggregates, but the total for each year is given. It is not hard to dig out how many firearms were shown to have come from the United States for each year. The data is divided into various categories. A major division is U.S. Sourced Firearms and Undetermined Source Country for Firearms.

Using the ATF data, the U.S. Sourced Firearms were totaled for 2015 through 2022. The results are as follows:

Belize – 285, Costa Rica- 65, El Salvador – 6,954, Guatemala – 5,913, Honduras – 1,989, Panama 1,921, and Nicaragua -  (only 7 years listed) 17.

The total traced back 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 is 120,799 traced back to the United States. This is a far cry from “over 200,000″.

The links to data in the article goes to an advocacy site, stopusarmstomexico.org. From the site, this chart of numbers is found:

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

Total traces is not total traced to the United States. In El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the number of unknown origin is considerably higher than those of United States 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 available. It is impossible to know how many guns are diverted before they are traced, for example. This correspondent has heard many stories indicating many guns which are confiscated are seldom included in the official records.

The numbers do not matter to the argument put forward. They are used as a means of drawing attention. To people not familiar with gun ownership statistics in the United States and around the world, 100,000 or 200,000 seems like a large number.

Put the number in perspective. There are over 500 million privately owned firearms in the United States. Over eight years, about 120,799 were traced back to the United States from four countries South of the Mexican border, or about 15 thousand firearms traced back to the United States a year. About .003 percent of the US stock may be traced to a U.S. origin from four countries south of the border, while the U.S. private stock is increasing by over 15 million a year.

The U.S. private stock is increasing a thousand times faster than firearms are being confiscated and traced to the U.S. from the four countries south of the border.

The argument put forward by stoparmstomexico.org and Newsweek is essentially this: 

1. Guns are bad.

2. More guns, more bad.

3. More bad South of the border, more people flee to the U.S.

4. Therefore, the Second Amendment forces people to come to the U.S. 

Readers can spot the logical flaw.

If more guns are causing people to flee their countries, why are they fleeing to a country with thousands of times more guns than in their country?

A counter argument is: 

Guns are not bad. The uneven distribution of guns causes the problems.  If only small factions of the people in countries South of the border, such as government agents or criminal gangs (it is sometimes difficult to discern between the two, such as in Haiti), there is an imbalance of power between the people and the government.

People flee the oppression which comes from such imbalances of power. 

Many South of the Border envy the freedom to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment.

©2024 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch