Gun sales in the US began to soar in October 2008 in anticipation of an Obama presidency, and they have continued at record levels ever since. Gun rights advocates have called Obama the best gun salesman ever, as his radical socialism has inspired citizens to stockpile weapons and ammo. Most folk who understand the American ethos look to the Second Amendment — the right to keep and bear arms — as the last defense against overweening government.

Liberals typically equate more guns with more crime and violence. But now the statistics are out for last year, and the exact opposite is true. Today the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released the preliminary draft of its annual uniform crime report, Crime in the United States (2009):

Preliminary figures indicate that, as a whole, law enforcement agencies throughout the Nation reported a decrease of 5.5 percent in the number of violent crimes brought to their attention for 2009 when compared with figures reported for 2008. The violent crime category includes murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. The number of property crimes in the United States in 2009 decreased 4.9 percent when compared with data from 2008. Property crimes include burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. Arson is also a property crime, but data for arson are not included in property crime totals. Figures for 2009 indicate that arson decreased 10.4 percent when compared to 2008 figures.

Looking deeper into the included data tables, the National Shooting Sports Foundation focuses on the particular crime for which the capability for self-defense is most helpful, that of homicide:

Since the surge in firearms purchases began in October 2008, if one believes the oft-repeated mantra that ‘Most crime guns are rapidly diverted from retailers to the street via straw purchasers,’ then we should have also seen a surge in homicides and other violent crime. We have not. In fact, statistics from the Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report show that all forms of violent crime were down in 2009 from 2008, with homicides showing the greatest percentage decline (7.2 percent).

Related:

Charging Elephant — More guns equal more crime? Not in 2009, FBI crime report shows.

CCRKBA — LATEST FBI CRIME DATA CONTINUES TO REFUTE ANTI-GUN RHETORIC

Barack Obama misrepresented gun numbers during his trip to Mexico last week in a way that amounts to lying. Appearing with Mexican President Felipe Calderón on Thursday, Obama spoke about the drug violence in Mexico:

“This war is being waged with guns purchased not here but in the United States. More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that lay in our shared border.”

Here’s the truth. When the Mexican government confiscates guns, it sorts out those that appear to be made in the United States and sends them to us so we can trace them by serial number. But the guns that they send to us are only a fraction of the total number of guns that they confiscate.

Of the subset of guns sent by the Mexican government to the US, 90% turn out to actually be from the US, and the rest were mistakenly identified. That’s where the 90% figure comes from. But the guns that are actually from the US used in the Mexican gun war are really only about 17% of the total number of guns confiscated by Mexico.

Nevertheless, Obama is using these misleading assertions to promote the Inter-American Arms Treaty, first unsuccessfully proposed in 1998 and now being revived in the new effort to disarm America. The Washington Times notes Obama’s real agenda:

Democrats aren’t alone in repeating phony gun statistics. The New York Times, CNN and numerous networks continue to repeat the 90 percent figure with no reporting to back it up. The hysteria is used to create the notion that a major problem exists with American guns – and Mr. Obama is anxious to step in to solve that problem with a $400 million program to stop U.S. guns from going to Mexico. That initiative would include clampdowns on U.S. gun shops.

It is ridiculous for Mr. Obama to blame Mexico’s lawlessness on Americans as if the longstanding corruption of Mexican elected officials, judges and law-enforcement officers has nothing to do with it. …his real agenda is to pursue gun control here at home.

During the last Presidential debate, free trade came up for discussion. Responding to McCain’s support for Bush’s free trade proposal with Colombia, Obama said,

“Let me respond. Actually, I understand it pretty well. The history in Colombia right now is that labor leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis and there have not been prosecutions.”

Obviously Obama does not understand. He is repeating what Hugo Chavez wants Americans to believe. Hugo Chavez must have been jumping for joy! The millions he has invested to brainwash Americans are yielding results. The reality is that, due to security improvements under Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, there has been a marked human rights improvement over a decade ago. Under Uribe, Colombia has agreed to a permanent ILO mission to monitor labor rights, and arrests and prosecutions of those committing the violence have increased. Far fewer union members were being killed this year than the nearly 200 that were killed in 2002.  Obama’s remarks during the debate, however, may be changing the situation for the worse.  Those remarks seem to have fueled violence and increased the number of people killed in Colombia.

As if to support Obama’s remarks, on October 23 Reuters reported:

Thousands of indigenous Colombians marched on Thursday to press their demands against President Alvaro Uribe, and labor unions protested in the capital Bogota, where five small blasts panicked residents.

Indigenous protesters with traditional staves, banners and mock coffins snaked toward Cali city, where leaders want talks with Uribe on promises to protect their lands, defend them against violence and reject a U.S. free trade agreement.

In Bogota, where several thousand state employees marched against Uribe’s economic management, five small explosions left in trash cans or tied to lampposts slightly wounded at least 11 people, police said without commenting on those responsible.

Authorities say three indigenous protesters have died during more than a week of demonstrations near Cali. Uribe says they were killed when a homemade bomb exploded, but community leaders say security forces shot the victims…

Who benefits from the marches by indigenous protesters in coordination with manifestations of labor unions? Not most of Colombians who only want peace and a trade agreement that would benefit Colombia.  It’s Chavez and their terrorist friends who benefit. Their objective is to prevent the trade agreement and impose “socialismo del siglo XXI” (Marxism) in Colombia, as it has been imposed in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia. Colombia would then become another U.S. enemy. If Obama is elected president of the United States, Colombia, America’s best ally in Latin America, will fall in Chavez’s hands and in the hands of Chavez’s accomplices — Russians, FARC, Islamic terrorists and other enemies of the free world. And Colombia’s falling in Chavez’s hands will destroy the hopes of Cubans, Venezuelans, Ecuadorians and Bolivians of returning to democracy and a free-market economy. It will also increase the danger of Marxism — and the greater poverty and corruption that Marxism engenders — for the rest of Latin America … and the United States.

From Reuters comes more information on the ongoing chaos in Mexico which generally gets little or no coverage in our mainstream media. How much longer before this chaos starts spilling over into our own country? Or, maybe it’s already started?

Seventeen killed in Mexico drug battle near U.S.
By Lizbeth Diaz  |  Saturday, April 26, 2008

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) – Seventeen Mexican drug gang members were killed near the U.S. border on Saturday, their bodies scattered along a road after one of the deadliest shootouts in Mexico’s three-year narco-war.

Rival factions of the Arellano Felix drug cartel in Tijuana on the Mexico-California border battled each other with rifles and machine guns in the early hours of the morning, police said.

Fourteen bodies were lying in pools of blood on a road near assembly-for-export maquiladora plants on the city’s eastern limits. The corpses were surrounded by hundreds of bullet casings and many of their faces were destroyed.

The 15th body was found nearby. Two more men died in hospital on Saturday evening, police said.

Six men were wounded and another six were arrested, but some gang members are thought to have escaped….

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is siding with a Mexican organization against the laws of the United States:

ACLU-SAN DIEGO AND MEXICO’S HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION ANNOUNCE AGREEMENT TO PROTECT MIGRANTS’ HUMAN RIGHTS ON THE BORDER

In a historic agreement to pursue joint strategies to protect the human rights of migrants moving across the Mexico-United States border, the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties and the Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos today signed a document declaring common goals and principles to address the serious human rights issues.

The Memorandum of Agreement between the two organizations charges the parties jointly to explore legal actions to challenge Operation Gatekeeper and other programs that have contributed to migrant deaths, and to educate a transnational audience about the issue of human rights tragedies at the border. More than $30 billion dollars have been spent on Gatekeeper since its inception, but the program has done little to prevent illegal entries—it has simply shifted them to the mountains and deserts east of San Diego, where migrants face much harsher conditions in remote, environmentally hostile areas….

On the Lou Dobbs Tonight show, reporter Casey Wian notes that Mexican president Calderon has illegal kin in the United States. Go here to view the video segment. From his remarks:

“Many times the press asks me, well, where are you cousins, your friends?…and I tell them, the day in which there is a migratory reform [a.k.a. amnesty in the U.S.], I am going to tell them where my cousins and friends are.”