For Immediate Release
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Senator Chuck Grassley gave the following statement after new data was released from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Last year Grassley said that selective data released by the ATF inaccurately reflected the scope and source of the problem of firearms in Mexico and the drug trafficking organization violence. Here’s a copy of that letter.
Here’s Grassley’s comment on the new data.
“Thorough gun statistics are hard to come by and tricky to interpret. The key to this data is that most of these guns can’t be traced to U.S. gun dealers. And, some of those would actually trace back to the United States because of the federal government’s own gunwalking scandal. We also have to remember that the only guns Mexico is going to submit for tracing are guns they know are from the United States, which clearly paints an incomplete picture of the firearms found in the Mexico.”