My emphasis added.Some cash, few guns found in southbound checks
...
For the past five weeks, hundreds of agents participating in a newly intensified $95 million outbound inspection program have been stepping into southbound traffic lanes, stopping suspicious-looking cars and trucks.
...
The findings? Wads of U.S. currency headed for Mexico, wedged into car doors, stuffed under mattresses, taped onto torsos, were sniffed out by dogs, seized by agents and locked away for possible investigations. No guns were found as the reporters watched; they rarely are.
“I do not believe we can even make a dent in (southbound smuggling) because that assumes the cartels are complete idiots, which they’re not. Why in the world would they try to smuggle weapons and currency through a checkpoint when there are so many other options?” said Border Patrol Agent T.J. Bonner, president of the agents’ union.
According to CBP, between March 12 and April 30 officers seized:
—Fifty-one pieces of ammunition, weapons parts and guns, a minuscule fraction of the 2,000 weapons the Mexican government estimates are smuggled south every day.
—$12 million in cash, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the $17 billion to $39 billion the U.S. Justice Department estimates is illegally sent to Mexico from the U.S. annually, but more than the $10 million seized in outbound checks in 2008.
— Sixty-one people on charges involving weapons or currency offenses and on outstanding warrants.
As I've said repeatedly, the majority of weapons being used by the cartels aren't coming from legal U.S. OTC sales. They are coming from illegal (e.g. - stolen) firearms sales, theft, and from other sources (Central America, the Mexican military/police, and from the old Soviet states). From what lrb111 posted, they found 4000 out of almost 86,000 guns came from legal sales (let's be realistioc here for a second... the ones the Mexicans didn't submit are almost certainly not sourceable to the USA or to legal sales or they WOULD have done so).
This is all a tempest in a teapot intended to try and raise the fear level in this country so the Feds can be "required" to do something to try and stop the illegal trafficking (which isn't really happening much, but it makes good headlines), even if it means shutting down production and increased difficulty in getting firearms (which inevitably leads down that old slippery slope).
