NRA: Don’t Ban Gun Sales to Suspected Terrorists
by Sam Hananel for Associated Press
May 5, 2007
WASHINGTON - The National Rifle Association is urging the Bush administration to withdraw its support of a bill that would prohibit suspected terrorists from buying firearms. Backed by the Justice Department, the measure would give the attorney general the discretion to block gun sales, licenses or permits to terror suspects.
In a letter this week to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, NRA executive director Chris Cox said the bill, offered last week by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., “would allow arbitrary denial of Second Amendment rights based on mere ’suspicions’ of a terrorist threat.”
“As many of our friends in law enforcement have rightly pointed out, the word ’suspect’ has no legal meaning, particularly when it comes to denying constitutional liberties,” Cox wrote. In a letter supporting the measure, Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling said the bill would not automatically prevent a gun sale to a suspected terrorist. In some cases, federal agents may want to let a sale go forward to avoid compromising an ongoing investigation.
Hertling also notes there is a process to challenge denial of a sale. Current law requires gun dealers to conduct a criminal background check and deny sales if a gun purchaser falls under a specified prohibition, including a felony conviction, domestic abuse conviction or illegal immigration. There is no legal basis to deny a sale if a purchaser is on a terror watch list. “When I tell people that you can be on a terrorist watch list and still be allowed to buy as many guns as you want, they are shocked,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which supports Lautenberg’s bill.
In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, lawmakers are considering a number of measures to strengthen gun sale laws. The NRA, which usually opposes increased restrictions on firearms, is taking different positions depending on the proposal. “Right now law enforcement carefully monitors all firearms sales to those on the terror watch list,” said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam. “Injecting the attorney general into the process just politicizes it.”
A 2005 study by the Government Accountability Office found that 35 of 44 firearm purchase attempts over a five-month period made by known or suspected terrorists were approved by the federal law enforcement officials.
[It’s good to see that the NRA is protecting the rights of all citizens – even those suspected of being terrorists. After all we wouldn’t want to see any infringement of their Right to Bear Arms, at least not before they are whisked off by the FBI/CIA for an extended stay in a certain Cuban facility…..]
About Me
- CyberKitten
- I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.
8 comments:
Thing is "terrorist" is a loose definition. Recently the state of Alabama posted on their homeland security website that anyone with a distrust for government and who spoke out against gun control was a terrorist.
You know what that makes me. :)
scott said: You know what that makes me. :)
Erm... Someone who doesn't live in Alabama? [grin].
Terrorist is *such* a lovely plastic word. It can mean just about anything... It's such *so* useful for governments from around the world to use to sweep up anyone who disagrees with them....
I just don't see why gun rights are singled out here? For a suspected terrorist the Patriot Act gives all sorts of fun abilities to the feds. Tap their phones, take away their civil rights.. but god forbid we mess with GUN rights... that's just goin too far... :-\
It would seem Laura that the right to bear arms (in defence of the Commonwealth isn't it) comes WAY before any other rights....
It would seem Laura that the right to bear arms (in defence of the Commonwealth isn't it) comes WAY before any other rights....
Well the right to bear arms is enumerated as the best way to secure a free State, but that does not mean it is limited to that. One must remember that the constitution was a way of limiting the Federal government, not individuals.
And there is good reason to elevate the second amendment, as it is the means to protect all the other ones.
scott said: Well the right to bear arms is enumerated as the best way to secure a free State, but that does not mean it is limited to that. One must remember that the constitution was a way of limiting the Federal government, not individuals.
But isn't the "Right to Bear Arms" more to do with enabling citizens to protect the Commonwealth from attack - both foreign & domestic - rather than helping to ensure individual freedom *from* the state? At least that's my understanding of it from a foreign perspective....
Weeeelllll, both really. Many of the founders didn’t want the United States to have a standing army at all; so obviously having an armed citizenry is imperative to the Nation’s collective self-defense. However, at the same time, they saw that if the Federal Government was going to have a standing army, an armed citizenry is key to counter acting the threat of tyranny.
None of this had anything to do with individual’s rights to own guns though. That stuff has to do with militias. Individual rights were never a question. The country was founded on Liberalism and one of the tenants of Liberalism is, of course, natural rights. Included is the most basic of all rights, the right to self-defense. The Bill of Rights was not written to give rights, it simply enumerated some of them. Those that it didn’t list were not restricted, but implied to be given to the individual, as per the 9th and 10th amendments.
Restricting the right of individuals to own inanimate objects was the last thing on the minds of the people who founded this country.
As I understood it, the right to bear arms was a very forward thinking and democratic constitutional imperitive at the time. It was put into pretty much every liberal & left-wing political manifesto written at the time, and was mostly considered a way to limit the possibility of tyrannical government.
Of course, having seen what happened to the USA, it's now been taken out of all of them....... :-)
Post a Comment