U.S. laws make it easy for terror suspects to be armed

For suspected terrorists, the United States must be a very confusing place.

They’re banned from flying on commercial airliners, yet they can stroll down to their neighborhood gun store and purchase anything they want, including assault rifles.

There’s no law against it, and no agency able to stop them, including the so-called Department of Homeland Security.

During a nine-month period last year, 58 firearms applications were received from known terror suspects at gun shops around the country. According to a new report by the Government Accountability Office, 47 of those permits were approved.

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There’s no law against it, and no agency able to stop them, including the so-called Department of Homeland Security.

Nobody, not even a "terror suspect", can legally go into a gun store or gun show in the USA, slap down some cash, and walk out with an assault rifle (the term means selective-fire or fully automatic, i.e. a real military weapon, not a semiautomatic).

That's Blooper #1 for this article:

See http://www.atf.treas.gov/firearms/nfa/index.htm for information about the National Firearms Act of 1934.

During a nine-month period last year, 58 firearms applications were received from known terror suspects at gun shops around the country. According to a new report by the Government Accountability Office, 47 of those permits were approved.

Blooper #2: No "permit" is needed to buy a sporting firearm in the USA and there is no "application". They are referring to requests for background checks made to the National Instant Check System (NICS), which is a database of people known to be prohibited from buying a firearm. If your name isn't on the list, you have a right to buy a gun.

Allowing terror suspects to arm themselves on the streets of America is patently insane, but that’s the policy — thanks to our famously porous gun laws.

Blooper #3: Someone who is merely suspected of a crime of of intent to commit one must continue to enjoy our full range of liberties, rights, and freedoms. It's called presumption of innocence. If police and prosecutors have enough reason to arrest someone and charge him or her with a crime that's a different situation.

We must not allow the "terrorist" Bogeyman to be used as a rationalization for undermining civil liberties.

Even now, after 9/11, being on a terrorist watch list doesn’t disqualify you from purchasing firearms. The only applications automatically denied are those from felons, illegal aliens or someone considered ‘‘mentally defective,’’ a category that ought to include the authors of current gun regulations.

Blooper #4: Even convicted felons and others who have been denied the right to vote or the right to own a gun or the right to enter into a government contract have the right to appeal their status through the courts. People who have been placed on the FBI's secret terrorism watch list have no recourse, and no way to get their names cleared. It's called due process.

Paper trail destroyed

Last year, Congress amended the law to require that all records of firearm purchases be destroyed within 24 hours of the background check, thereby eliminating a crucial paper trail that could help the FBI and other agencies build cases.

Blooper #5: NICS background checks leave no paper trail, and the system was never intended to be used for that purpose. The paper trail for gun purchases remains the same as it has since the Gun Control Act of 1968 took effect: Permanent paper records in gun dealers' files, the form formerly known as BATF Form 4473.

For this mandatory erasure of potential evidence, criminal gangs and aspiring terrorists owe a debt of gratitude to the National Rifle Association, which lobbied hard for the change. Not a peep of protest came from then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, a longtime NRA lackey.

Blooper #5: NICS was created in the 1994 omnibus crime bill, which was negotiated and passed by a Congress in which Democrats controlled both houses. It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The law specifically states that records of background check requests be destroyed.

It wasn’t until February 2004 that Ashcroft relented and allowed the FBI to share some firearms records with anti-terrorist intelligence units. Twice since then the feds have successfully intervened to block weapons sales to terror suspects, according to the GAO.

Blooper #6: The sales that were blocked were blocked for cause - The individuals had past criminal convictions and/or were in the country illegally. The existing laws worked.

But what about the dozens of others who have been allowed to get guns? Even if the FBI kept an eagle eye on each of them, it’s virtually impossible to stop a one-man suicide massacre of the sort preferred by anti-Western fanatics.

Blooper #7: None of the "one-man suicide massacres preffered by anti-Western fanatics" has ever been done with a firearm. Those people use explosives.

Beyond that, Lautenberg also wants an opinion from the new attorney general, Alberto Gonzalez, on whether persons on the FBI’s terror watch lists should be automatically prevented from buying weapons. Such a step would likely require changing the law.

Blooper #8: It would require a complete overhaul of the Constitutional protections give to criminal suspects.

To see this for the massive flim-flam that it is, all you have to do is replace every occurance of "terror suspect" with "criminal suspect".

They might not be able to board a jetliner, but there’s no limit to the murderous mayhem they could cause on the ground.

I hope Mr. Hiassen will get back to us when the buying of sporting firearms by "terror suspects" becomes an actual threat to national security.

Carl Hiaasen, although a good novelist, for years has been 100% clueless about what gun laws exist in this country and how they're applied.

His cluelessness goes beyond careless ignorance. I'm pretty sure there willful ignorance here.

I'll use the term "ignorance" because it gives him the benefit of the doubt. Without that, I would be forced to brand him a baldfaced liar and propagandist when it comes to this stuff ;->