Posted on 03/08/2005 10:50:19 PM PST by neverdem
The good news for Americans concerned about post-9/11 preparedness is that 58 potential gun buyers were flagged in a nine-month period last year as positive matches on a federal watch list of terrorism suspects. The bad news is that 47 of them were cleared to go ahead anyway and buy assault rifles, ammunition or whatever else was on their firearms shopping list. Federal agents could only watch as the crazy quilt of loopholes that passes for gun control in this country enabled dozens of suspects to stock their personal or group armories.
Welcome to the new world of homeland security, where all the national resolve to be alert is clearly butting into the citizenry's near-almighty right to bear arms.
Warnings about terror suspects' easy access to combat rifles grew after 9/11 when it was disclosed that John Ashcroft, a gun rights zealot who was attorney general at the time, had blocked federal agents from matching gun-purchase records against the growing list of thousands of terror suspects. The privacy rights of innocent gun purchasers were deemed paramount in the national emergency. The policy was theoretically reversed, but federal agents complain that they are still stymied by laws and by officials dedicated to the most extreme agenda of the gun lobby.
The alarming ease with which terror suspects can buy high-powered weapons on Main Street was disclosed by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. This is an irony in itself since the Republican-controlled Congress declined last year to renew the 10-year-old assault rifle ban, which had helped keep battlefield weapons out of the hands of mayhem-minded citizens.
The study was requested by Senator Frank Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, who is proposing to keep the gun-purchase records of terror suspects on hand for at least 10 years. Currently, purchase records must be destroyed within 24 hours - another victory for the gun lobby that was obsequiously enacted last year by Congress.
Jeepers, they'd better change the rules so that all law-abiding terrorists will hand in their guns.
I support the right to arm bears.
Good catch!
Of course the liberal media, including anti-gun O'Reilly, continue the convenient confusion between "assault rifles, which have been regulated heavily since 1934, and "assault weapons" which is an invented term defined to be whatever ugly, scary firearm is under discussion by the Brady Bunch.
Somebody high up in Fox News needs to insist that O'Reilly get himself educated in guns and gun rights. He is an embarassment to an otherwise relatively balanced news organization.
He's a shill for populism and statism. His constant attacks on the Second Amendment succeeded in turning me off completely.
Murdoch is well known for his anti-gun attitude..
It's this attitude by the owner that allows O'Reilly to become the head "mouth" at Fox, and slants all gun related news and opinion against gun ownership..
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