Guns in Mexico - 90% used in crime come from US - Myth

Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Wednesday made an assertion -- cited in the past by Mexico's U.S. ambassador and even by U.S. leaders, but debunked as a myth -- that 90 percent of the weapons intercepted in Mexico come from the U.S.

"I know that this is a very sensitive issue," Calderon said in an interview with NBC News. He also said that he will tell President Obama during his visit Thursday to Mexico City that the U.S. needs to clean up its drug problem if Mexico is going to be successful in its battle against the cartels.

"The source of the problem was the huge demand for drugs in the United States the largest market in the world for drugs," he said. "The United States, you have a lot of traffic of drugs. You have a lot of distribution of drugs. You have a lot of corruption as well."

Calderon's comments came days after Auturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the United States, appeared on CBS' "Face the Nation" and made the same claim that 90 percent of the weapons intercepted in Mexico come from the U.S.

FOX News debunked that claim in a report earlier this month that found only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S., though even that figure is an imprecise estimate.

Calderon and Sarukhan aren't the only one to cite this myth. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, California Sen. Diane Feinstein and Willliam Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, have all said that 90 percent of weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the U.S. - FOX News Story