US guns fuel Mexico drug war? The politics behind the issue.

And the gun lobby says we should be supplying Mexican citizens with guns to battle the cartels! More guns, more violence. 

US guns fuel Mexico drug war? The politics behind the issue. - CSMonitor.com: "Who is supplying guns to Mexican drug traffickers?

The answer has become one of the most polemical in the gun rights debate, with Mexico blaming lax US gun laws and gun rights advocates saying that blame is misplaced....

The ATF's statistic has been controversial since it was first cited two years ago. (At that time the number was even higher, at around 90 percent. It may have dropped now because more guns are getting traced today).

Nonetheless, it only accounts for guns seized in Mexico, and of those, the ones that the Mexican government submits for tracing. Many see that as an incomplete set of data, leading them to dismiss the statistic as inaccurate.

“It is completely misleading. There is a huge population of guns that Mexicans confiscated that they don’t submit to trace to the ATF,” says Robert Farago, the managing editor of the website The Truth about Guns.

Still, it is estimated that about 30 percent of weapons seized in Mexico are submitted for tracing. And whether it is 90 percent or 70 percent that come from the US within that pool, that is still a large number of American guns circulating in Mexico. ... 

Farago says Mexico should loosen its restrictions on rights to bear arms, even allowing the US to supply citizens with weapons. “We should be supplying guns to Mexican citizens who cannot defend themselves,” he says. “They are completely at the mercy of these drug [traffickers].”"