Terror Suspects' Right To Bear Arms

March 9, 2005
EDITORIAL

Terror Suspects' Right to Bear Arms

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 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.

Copyright 2005

Posted by Miriam V. 3/9