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A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL COMMENTARY
DECEMBER 6
Our Attorney General, who was recently featured as the monthly poster boy by the
National Rifle Association, is selling out the war on terrorism to appease the gun
lobby. He is willing to infringe on civil rights right and left, but he is
prohibiting the FBI from checking on gun purchases and ownership of alleged
terrorists. That's not even an infringement on anyone's civil rights. That's just a
craven sell out to the gun lobby, at the expense of fully fighting the war on
terrorism.
Why is Ashcroft doing this? As a failed candidate for re-election to the Senate from
Missouri in 2000, Ashcroft received more campaign money from the NRA than any other
senate candidate. The NRA has longed been more concerned about protecting the gun
industry than protecting the health, safety and security of Americans. Through other
means, bypassing the Justice Department, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms,
has found that "34 guns seized in crimes had been bought at some point by people on
the detainee list," according to the New York Times.
But that is probably just the tip of the iceberg. The gun lobby doesn't want
Americans to know how the porous gun purchasing system in the United States makes the
whole country a virtual flee market for small arms trafficking by terrorists and
others. Our Attorney General, who pompously justifies trampling on civil rights
guaranteed by the Constitution, stands by the dangerous self-protective stance of the
gun industry, rather than allow law enforcement officials from taking the first steps
to identify terrorists involvement with firearms ownership in the United States.
Whose side is the Attorney General on? The side of the American people in the war on
terrorism, or the side of the gun lobby who doesn't give a damn if terrorists buy guns
in the U.S.?
If it weren't tragic in its implications for the nation, the Ashcroft/NRA effort to
conceal the likely terrorist gun purchases from the American public and law
enforcement officials would be the stuff of a dark comedy. The Justice Department is
refusing to turn over potential terrorist gun purchase information to the FBI,
because, one Ashcroft DOJ official, "ruled that these checks were improper, reasoning
that they would violate the privacy of these foreigners. F.B.I. officials said
foreigners normally did not have privacy rights unless they have achieved permanent
resident status."
The NRA bragged, before the 2000 election, that if Bush won, they would have an office
at the White House. Well, they must have one at the Justice Department too, to the
detriment of the safety and security of the American public.
A BuzzFlash Editorial Commentary
New York Times Article Follows
Here is the article from the New York Times that details the Ashcroft betrayal of our
anti-terrorism effort to appease the NRA, his patron:
Go To:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/06/national/06GUNS.html?pagewanted=print
December 6, 2001
Justice Dept. Bars Use of Gun Checks in Terror Inquiry
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
The New York Times
The Justice Department has refused to let the F.B.I. check its records to determine
whether any of the 1,200 people detained after the Sept. 11 attacks had bought guns,
F.B.I. and Justice Department officials say.
The department made the decision in October after the F.B.I. asked to examine the
records it maintains on background checks to see if any detainees had purchased guns
in the United States.
Mindy Tucker, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said the request was rejected
after several senior officials decided that the law creating the background check
system did not permit the use of the records to investigate individuals.
Ms. Tucker did not elaborate on the decision, but it is in keeping with Attorney
General John Ashcroft's strong support of gun rights and his longstanding opposition
to the government's use of background check records. In 1998, as a senator from
Missouri, Mr. Ashcroft voted for an amendment to the Brady gun-control law to destroy
such records immediately after checking the background of a prospective gun buyer.
That amendment was defeated.
"We intend to use every legal tool available to protect American lives," John
Collingwood, an assistant director of the F.B.I., said, but he added that "applicable
law does not permit" the background check records to be used "for this purpose."
The Justice Department's action has frustrated some F.B.I. and other law enforcement
officials who say it puts the department at odds with its own priorities. Even as the
department is instituting tough new measures to detain individuals suspected of links
to terrorism, they say, it is being unusually solicitous of foreigners' gun rights.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police, the nation's largest group of law
enforcement executives, has already written one letter to the F.B.I. opposing Mr.
Ashcroft's policy on gun records, and is drafting a second letter questioning the
decision not to check the gun records.
"This is absurd and unconscionable," said Larry Todd, the police chief of Los Gatos,
Calif., and a member of the group's firearms committee. "The decision has no rational
basis in public safety.
"It sounds to me like it was made for narrow political reasons based on a
right-to-bear-arms mentality," he said. "If someone is under investigation for a
terrorist act, all the records we have in this country should be checked, including
whether they bought firearms."
Yesterday, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, wrote to Mr. Ashcroft,
saying, "If the Department of Justice is not using the N.I.C.S. database as part of
the investigation, I am very concerned that the F.B.I. is being unnecessarily limited
in the tools that it can use to bring the perpetrators of this heinous attack to
justice." N.I.C.S. is the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
The conflict over how to deal with the records of background checks of gun buyers
predates Sept. 11.
Under the system, a gun dealer faxes in a form filled out by a prospective buyer to
either the F.B.I. or a state law enforcement agency; the authorities then run a
computerized search to make sure that the buyer does not fall into one of several
categories of people prohibited from buying a gun.
The records of those background checks, known as audit logs, have long been a point of
contention for some gun-rights advocates, who contend that they create a de facto
national gun registry.
The F.B.I. preserves the records for 90 days; it has said it needs at least that long
for investigative purposes and to make sure the system works. The Justice Department,
however, is expected to announce soon that it is switching to destruction of the
records within 24 hours.
On Sept. 16, said Mr. Collingwood, the assistant F.B.I. director, the Treasury
Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms asked the F.B.I. to check a list
of 186 names of detainees against the background check records.
The F.B.I. got two "hits," other F.B.I. officials said, meaning that two of the
detainees had been approved to buy guns.
But the next day, after a further review by F.B.I. and Justice Department lawyers, the
bureau's unit that maintains the records "was advised that reviews for this purpose
were not permissible under the current statutory and regulatory scheme," Mr.
Collingwood said.
"That was confirmed after a request that the matter be reviewed again," Mr.
Collingwood added, apparently a reference to what other F.B.I. officials said was an
appeal to the Justice Department by a senior F.B.I. official.
Among those in the Justice Department who opposed letting the F.B.I. use the records
were Viet Dinh, the assistant attorney general for legal policy and a political
appointee close to Mr. Ashcroft, as well as a second top department official, Ms.
Tucker said.
The dispute about the records centers on two issues: which people can be checked and
how the records may be used by investigators.
Until now, F.B.I. officials said, it was permissible to check the records if someone
who had been approved to buy a gun should not have been allowed to. The prohibited
categories include foreigners of several different statuses, like an illegal immigrant
or someone in the country for less than 90 days. Investigators believed that many
detainees fell into those groups and sought clearance to check whether they had bought
guns.
But in what several officials called a reversal of existing procedure, Mr. Dinh ruled
that these checks were improper, reasoning that they would violate the privacy of
these foreigners. F.B.I. officials said foreigners normally did not have privacy
rights unless they have achieved permanent resident status.
"It is like there is a gun-rights exception to the war on terrorism," said Mathew
Nosanchuk, litigation director for the Violence Policy Center, a gun control group in
Washington. Mr. Nosanchuk was a Justice Department lawyer in the Clinton
administration who helped to write many of the gun-records regulations.
The records may be reviewed to assure the system functions properly, but a second
issue is whether they can be used by investigators.
Current rules state the records can be used "for the purposes of investigating,
prosecuting, and/or enforcing violations of criminal or civil law that may come to
light during N.I.C.S. operations."
Mr. Nosanchuk said, "A fair interpretation is that if there is a terrorist act, and
that if you have a basis to think a person was in a prohibited category, it would be
O.K. for law enforcement to check the records to see if a person purchased a gun."
Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, declined to
comment on whether the Justice Department's ruling may have hindered the Sept. 11
investigation to protect gun rights.
But he said the fact that the F.B.I.'s initial check found that two detainees had been
wrongly cleared to buy guns was "testament to the lack of attention focused on
building the N.I.C.S. by the Clinton administration."
While it cannot be determined how many detainees bought guns, the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms did check some names against its database of guns that have been
used in the commission of crimes. It found that 34 guns seized in crimes had been
bought at some point by people on the detainee list, an A.T.F. agent said.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
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