Gun bans in Chicago and Washington, D.C., have been  mercilessly
struck down by the courts. Concealed carry laws are being  adopted and
expanded in states across the nation. Shooting sports are  increasing in
popularity, and gun and ammunition sales remain near  record highs.
It’s all enough to give the shrinking number of gun  control advocates
in the United States apoplexy.

It’s also enough to force them into acts of desperation to  prop up a failing ideology.

They’ll lie about the demise
of one of America’s most widespread  rifles, as it soars in popularity.
They’ will fabricate research, and  fudge facts to do so — including
matters of who lived and died. They’ll even go so far as to suggest limiting rights to minorities in a desperate bid to halt the  collapse of their cause.

So it should  come as little surprise that a new report
by Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun organization —  Mayors Against Illegal
Guns — relies completely upon deception to  promote the billionaire
mayor’s anti-firearm jihad.

The report, titled "The Movement of Illegal Guns Across the U.S.-Mexico Border,”
 relies entirely upon statistical dishonesty to support infringing upon
 U.S. gun rights, starting in the second sentence of the report:

The first sentence of the report is factually correct.  Thousands of
guns have been smuggled into Mexico by cartels, and theses  smuggled
firearms have been one source of munitions for the drug gangs.

The second sentence, however, is masterfully deceptive …  and
purposefully so. You’ll note that it says "90% of guns recovered and  
traced from Mexican crime scenes originated from gun dealers in the  
United States.”

Recovered and traced is the hinge for their entire argument.
It does not mean that 9  out of 10 guns recovered in Mexico come from
the United States, though  Bloomberg and others clinging to this fallacy
would have you believe this.

What it means is that when Mexican authorities recover  firearms from
a cartel, they try to discern their origins. The vast  majority of
firearms recovered by Mexican authorities have no ties to  the United
States in any way, shape, or form. Roughly 80% of guns  recovered from
the cartels come from other nations, often former Soviet  block nations
where AK-47s and other automatic weapons can be obtained  on the black
market for next to nothing, in bulk.

The only firearms handed over to the ATF by the Mexican  government
are those firearms they have reason to believe came from the  United
States. These include weapons manufactured in the United States,  as
well as weapons that bear a U.S. importer’s marks.

The Mexican government provides less than 20% of the weapons  they
capture for tracing. Of nearly 100,000 weapons recovered from the  
cartels, only 20 percent had been turned over to the U.S. for  
identification. Of those, 18,000 were determined to have been  
manufactured, sold, or imported from the United States. Less than half  
of that fractional amount could be traced to U.S. gun dealers. The rest
were stolen or acquired through other means.

Of 100,000 weapons recovered from the cartels, just 7,900 — less  than 8 percent — were traced to purchases from American gun  dealers.

Data is still being analyzed, but preliminary reports  indicate that in the majority of those sales, it was the customers acting criminally — completing "strawman” purchases where people who  pass the FBI’s NCIS background check turn  around and provide weapons to the cartels in exchange for pay.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns went out of its way to  carefully craft
sentences that would create the illusion that American  gun dealers were
the primary force behind the arming of the Mexican drug  cartels.

In doing so, they smeared thousands of federal firearms licensees who
must comply with rigorous guidelines, and who  could face the closure
of their businesses for demerits as minor as  misfiled paperwork. This
is a dishonest attack by anti-gun politicians  on law-abiding small
businessmen during the peak of a recession,  orchestrated to push an
anti-American agenda.

And it isn’t even  original.

President Barack Obama was called out for this fraud over a year ago, when he tried to  pass what became known as the "Mexican Gun Canard.” Mexican President  Felipe Calderon echoed the lie
several months ago, and was also taken to  task. That lesser
politicians thought they could spread the same  dishonesty unchallenged
is absurd.

Unsurprisingly, these politicians have allies in the media more  than
willing to further their propaganda efforts.  Richard Esposito of ABC
News is just the latest purveyor of the lie, in  his report "Mexican Crime, American Guns.”

ABC News makes no  effort at all to fact check the report of the
anti-gun group, which  would easily have been refuted by congressional
testimony provided by  ATF officials earlier this year. Instead, ABC
News provided an illusion  of credibility to what is nothing more than
carefully crafted  propaganda.

One can only assume that this  shoddy journalism is just one result of David Westin’s shameful  destruction of ABC News. When standards aren’t upheld and  agenda-driven "news” is allowed to thrive, credibility and ratings  suffer.

Not that any of us should be  surprised. Anti-gun organizations such
as the Brady Campaign, the  Violence Policy Center, and Mayors Against
Illegal Guns rely upon  deception and emotionalism for both funding and
to spread their message.  Bloomberg himself tried to profit
from the massacre of U.S. troops by an  enraged Muslim solider at Fort
Hood. That ABC news would be their beard  is hardly surprising, either.
In particular, Brian Ross’ investigative  team at The Blotter blog —
where Esposito published this  propaganda — have a long track record of inaccurate,  smear-based journalism.

Much of the American public is long past trusting politicians  or the
mainstream media, precisely because of this sort of  collaborative
deception. That these groups still bitterly cling to such  transparent
propaganda efforts is perhaps a sign of how desperate  they’ve become
attempting to defend an indefensible worldview.