90% of Mexican guns come from the US?

Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: “It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors … come from the United States.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeated it to reporters on a flight to Mexico. This "fact" has also been repeated by William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and by CBS newsman Bob Schieffer.

The problem is it isn't true. What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, "is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S." But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.

The real numbers are, according to the Mexican government, 29000 guns were recovered from crime scenes and of those 5114 were traced to the US, a 17% rate.

There is a big difference between 17 and 90%. Don't let the left convince you that banning gun sales here would solve gun crimes in Mexico.