ATF Acting Director threatens ATF whistleblowers

[gejohnston]

51. Ummm no, you missed the point

US origin simply means that they were made or imported in the US at one time. M-16s stolen from a military armory in El Salvador are still "US origin" 40 year old M-16s from Vietnam are still "US origin". That does not mean they are all, or even mostly, coming from US gun stores via straw purchasers. That is a very inefficient system. It would be cheaper for them to get military surplus AKs from Africa.

But Keith Krause, an arms expert and one of the authors of the Geneva Declaration report, said it was not clear how many of the weapons used by Mexican drug gangs came from the United States.
He said only 30 percent of an estimated 100,000 weapons confiscated in Mexico each year are sent by authorities to the United States for identification on suspicion of having crossed the long, porous border.
Of these, 80 percent turn out to be U.S.-made but that does not mean that 80 percent of the overall total of arms seized in Mexico are of U.S. origin, as is often claimed, he said.
"It's not the case that most of the weapons that are seized by Mexican police from drug gangs come from the United States... it's very misleading," Krause told a news briefing.
He said seizures and photographs suggest significant quantities of military-style weapons such as grenades and even rocket launchers, were not coming across the U.S. border but coming from surplus stocks in places such as Guatemala or even from other official sources in Mexico itself.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/27/us-arms-violence-idUSTRE79Q57620111027