AP uses border agent's murder as pretext for anti-gun propaganda piece, doesn't mention murder gun was via ATF

This from AP dirtbag Will Weissert:

BROWNSVILLE, Texas -- Federal agents are barely able to slow the river of American guns flowing into Mexico. In two years, a new effort to increase inspections of travelers crossing the border has netted just 386 guns - an almost infinitesimal amount given that an estimated 2,000 slip across each day.

The problem came into sharp focus again last month when a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was killed on a northern Mexican highway with a gun that was purchased in a town outside Fort Worth, Texas.

Never does Weissert's article note that the murder gun was sold to Mexican criminals on the instructions of the ATF. Instead, the article uses this consequence of ATF perfidy as an excuse to retail fabricated propaganda from Bill Clinton's anti-gun zealots. He does note that their report "did not include information on how [the 2,000 illegal guns a day] figure was reached," but that does not stop him from touting it as "the last comprehensive estimate on the subject." How does he know the study was comprehensive if they never revealed where their estimates came from? Is the study comprehensive if they pulled the numbers out of thin air?

Weissert goes on to mention the ATF gun running scandal, but instead letting his readers know that the current news story, the murder of agent Terry, is part of it, he just offers the ATF's nonsensical justification as his own analysis:

The ATF's work on the border highlights the tension between short-term operations aimed at arresting low-level straw buyers - legal U.S. residents with clean records who buy weapons - and long-term ones designed to identify who is directing the gun buys.

Since he is presenting this as his own understanding, he ought to note that if the Mexican government wants to identify who is directing illegal gun buys, they have plenty of cases to look at already. Under the guise of showing the magnitude of the problem that ATF is trying to solve, Weissert even provides some relevant figures:

From September 2009 to July 31 of last year alone, the Mexican government seized more than 32,000 illegal weapons, even though purchasing guns in Mexico requires permission from the country's defense department, and even then buyers are limited to pistols of .38-caliber or less.

Mexican authorities already know where the illegal guns are going because they are finding large numbers of them on a daily basis. As for their ability to prosecute gang leaders for illegal weapons that are confiscated from low level gang members, that problem is the same whether the guns come from the ATF or from Croatia.

Remember, ATF is not in any way following the guns they "let walk." Their own claim is that they are just looking to see where the guns end up, which offers no value-added for identifying the gang leaders who are buying them. If authorities can't trace a low level gang member's Croatian gun back to the gang leader who bought it then they can't trace an ATF gun back to the gang leader who bought it.

The ATF is providing a blatantly fraudulent excuse for its gun running, and Weissert takes it as his job to make this excuse look as good at possible. That this is not just stupidity on Weissert's part, but is willful deception, is proved by his pretense that Terry was murdered with an illegally sold weapon. He is self-consciously hiding the truth from his readers. Evil trash.

Another Weissert tidbit:

Many guns used to kill in Mexico never have their origins traced. Still, ATF has long estimated that of the weapons discovered at Mexican crime scenes which authorities do choose to trace, nearly 90 percent are eventually found to have been purchased in the U.S.

Duh. Guns legal for sale in the United States are identifiable by their import stamps, serial number ranges, and other markings. Those are the guns that are examined for U.S. gun trace data. Even then, the 90% figure only refers to those guns that are successfully traced. Of course the guns that the U.S. actually has trace data for are almost entirely U.S. guns. The actual percentage of Mexican crime guns that have been traced to America is 12.

These issues have been much discussed, and Weissert's article shows enough research that he would certainly be aware of them, yet he leaves the crucial context out, and again, the fact that he lies by omission about the Terry murder gun indicates that these other omissions are also intentional.

So what is the real reason for ATF's gun running? To provide facts in support of the Obama administration's ongoing effort to blame Mexican gun violence on American arms dealers, as justification for further infringing the constitutionally protected gun rights of American citizens. Analysis here.