By Carl
People named on the government's terrorism watch list have successfully purchased firearms hundreds of times since 2004, government investigators reported yesterday. In one case, a known or suspected terrorist was able to obtain an explosives license, the Government Accountability Office reported.
U.S. lawmakers requested the audit to show how people on the watch list can be stopped from boarding airplanes but not from buying guns. Under federal law, licensed firearms dealers must request an FBI background check for each buyer but cannot legally stop a purchase solely because someone is on the watch list. The study found that people on the list purchased firearms 865 times in 963 attempts over a five-year period ending in February.
Now, the general portrait of a gun dealer is someone who is a very narrow patriot: guns are necessary in order to keep the tyranny of government at bay, but they would never be used unnecessarily.
Right?
Apparently, not even that much. Suddenly patriotism and homeland and personal security fall by the wayside when profit becomes the overriding concern.
Interesting how greed can trump enlightened self-interest, the very basis of capitalism, isn't it? Here we have numerous instances of a gun dealer selling guns or explosives to a bunch of people whom the government, the BUSH administration in most instances, deemed a threat to the security of the nation.
So it's not like we have a bunch of "militiamen" (domestic terrorists with an acceptably cretinic agenda) purchasing guns to keep BATF agents at bay. These are folks the FBI won't let get on an airplane.
These dealers are selling weapons to presumed terrorists with no place to go...meaning the odds jump that the same gun dealers may be dealing with the aftermath of their greed right in their own home towns.
Worse, I can almost imagine that some greedy bastard went one step further, and told his other customers that "them terrists is loadin' up on guns, so kin Ah sells ya this here semi-auto unner th table?" I certainly hope I'm wrong, but my guess with respect to the inherent greed of humanity is I'm right. We'd sell our countrymen out for a bowl of soup, and now, I'm betting, we'd sell our neighbors out, too.
You can blame the loophole in the law, and the temptation to do so is pretty strong. After all, if you can't legally stop someone from buying a gun, then you're just following orders, right? But let's face facts: it's very easy to just say no.
And they cannot. It is apparent that not only should this loophole be shut tight, but that gun dealers should face increasingly stronger punishment for lapses in judgement. A gun is intended to harm. Period. In many instances, I have no problem with that, but we ought to limit the sale of weapons to only those instances as much as possible and since we've given loopholes of all sizes to gun dealers to slip through, then it's only fair that when they do screw up, it ought to cost them a lot more than just a few bucks.
Labels: gun control, Second Amendment, terrorism
6 Comments:
Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?
The terrorist watch list is a list of suspects and people who have irritated the DHS. It's not a list of people who have been lawfully convicted.
There's no ethical basis to expand the premise of guilty-if-suspected from permission to travel to any other area.
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Anonymous, at 8:30 PM
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Anonymous, at 10:00 PM
A friend of mine, an American by birth and a heart surgeon by trade happens to have the same name as a former Iraqi official. He has a hard time traveling and his life has been a lot of fun since 2001 because of these lists and it's a national disgrace not to be tolerated or explained away or forgiven in a free country.
Being on some internal FBI list of suspicious persons is not an indictment, much less a conviction -- and more often than not it's because of a similar name or false accusation that the FBI has no inclination or time to rectify. These people have no effective recourse to protest being listed. Many don't even know it. I probably have an FBI file and most of my college friends as well -- simply from peacefully attending protest rallies in the mid 1960's.
I have to speak up for due process as well - it's not a gift from the FBI or the government, it's the constitution, it's a natural right of man. Like the "no fly" list, this FBI list is heavily loaded with people with no connection to terrorism at all and so says the GAO. Small children are on the suspect list.
So with all respect, I am not willing to advocate cutting a swath through the law to get at some hypothetical devil.
Sometimes - virtually all the time - a firearm is for putting holes in a piece of paper or in squirrels, other times it's to prevent someone else from doing harm, else the police wouldn't carry them. There is no statistical evidence linking severity of gun laws or punishments to lower crime rates. Quite the contrary in many cases.
People with criminal intent do not go to gun shops to buy guns and draconian punishments do not reduce crimes.
Of course any business will be asking for a civil rights lawsuit if it refuses to deal with someone who has a beard and of course sporting goods shops have no access to lists of people the FBI may deem risky because of their religion or opinions. A business has no right to discriminate against someone because of his race, a foreign sounding name or religion or because some neighbor is willing to call the FBI and raise suspicion. All they can do and all they are required to do is check with local authorities to see if the customer has a criminal record. If it's greed to engage in a lawful business, lawfully and if selling something legally to a legal customer is to be punished severely, why then I will risk being put on yet another FBI list, because liberty is dead.
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Capt. Fogg, at 10:45 AM
Fogg, the background check will reveal the applicant is on the watch list.
While he can still legally buy the gun, what gun shop owner would worry about being dragged into a lawsuit? The NRA would provide lawyers, guns and money in a heartbeat.
They ought to refuse the sale.
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Carl, at 5:38 PM
The GAO report here --
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-125R
shows this is a very complex minefield and that no guidelines have been issued by the Justice department about what can be denied to someone not charged with a crime. Should the local sheriff take it upon himself to say no when asked by a seller when there is no law requiring him to do so or even suggesting it?
Is this a "loophole" as CNN insists or is this an absence of a legal basis for putting people under a degree of arrest without informing them -- and as I said, if the list is used, odds are that anyone affected will have nothing to do with terrorism and much to do with race and religion. Is the reason that there is no law or DOJ directive that it's unconstitutional? I have a feeling it is and that the country is tiring of these martial-law-like "patriot act" excesses.
I remain uncomfortable with the idea that civil rights, including the right to travel, can be summarily abridged and indefinitely abridged without notification, without formal charges and without due process and in effect without even the right to challenge it in court.
What is the legal basis for restricting the restriction to plane tickets and guns? What about cars and trucks and bolt cutters and axes or the hundreds of things that might be used in an act of sabotage? Aren't these decisions that should be made by congress and not the administration if we're to pretend to be a free country?
Such things are the characteristics of totalitarian states and we've gone far enough in that direction, IMO. I don't think it has any place in a free country.
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Capt. Fogg, at 11:16 AM
I remain uncomfortable with the idea that civil rights, including the right to travel, can be summarily abridged and indefinitely abridged without notification, without formal charges and without due process and in effect without even the right to challenge it in court.
Agreed, but if you're going to go so far as to prevent a plane flight (people can still get around by car or bus or train), then it seems to me that stopping someone who is on the terror list from getting the gun is a no-brainer.
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Carl, at 2:33 PM
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