Far-right gun zealots and conspiracy theorist are continuing to spread this nonsense about Eric Holder and the ATF supplying guns to Mexican drug cartels in order to generate sympathy for anti-gun laws.
Townhall's Kate Pavlich is taking it one step further.
PAVLICH: My whole thing has always been through this process, you know, if you really want to stop trafficking of guns into Mexico from America get rid of ATF and DOJ because they are the number one supplier of guns to Mexican drug cartels at this point.
Cue our crazy conspiracy theory music:
Chris Brown from Media Matters sets the record straight:
Overall 64,000 U.S. guns have been traced from Mexican crime scenes in the last five years. The ATF has seized more 10,000 firearms and more then 1.1. million rounds of ammunition headed to the southwest border in the same period. In the last 2 years on the Mexican side of the border, 20,504 or 70 percent of the total firearms submitted to be traced were U.S. sourced.
But, again, none of this matters because they're just making stuff up. You could show them hard evidence that the ATF is seizing guns and not distributing them, but the NRA and its disciples will continue to lie to its own people about what's happening down there.
One question for Pavlich: who will seize illegal firearms from cartels if the ATF is eliminated? Blackwater? Halliburton?
(This post is written as part of the Media Matters Gun Facts fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship is to further Media Matters’ mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, gun violence, and extremism, the fellowship program is designed to fight this misinformation with facts.)