Posted on 09/01/2010 8:08:19 AM PDT by markomalley
The only thing stupider than allowing a known foreign terrorist into the United States may be allowing that terrorist to buy guns.
Current U.S. law allows this to happen. It also allows known terrorists on the no-fly list to buy guns. Perhaps worse still, the U.S. government has approved background checks for watch-listed terrorists to possess explosives in the United States.
From March 2009 through February 2010, according to prepared congressional testimony from Eileen Larence, the Government Accountability Office’s director of homeland security and justice issues, 272 National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) checks turned up individuals on the terrorist watch list. All but one was for a firearms purchase. The other was for explosives.
“One of the 272 transactions involved an explosives background check, which was allowed to proceed because the check revealed no disqualifying factors under the Safe Explosives Act,” Larence testified.
Of the 271 firearms-background checks that revealed the prospective gun purchaser was on the terrorist watch list, only 22 resulted in the would-be purchaser being denied a gun. The other 249 transactions were allowed to proceed.
Some of the watch-listed terrorists allowed to buy guns were on the no-fly list. “According to FBI officials, several of the 272 background checks resulted in matches to watch list records that—in addition to being in the FBI’s Known or Suspected Terrorist File—were on the Transportation Security Administration’s no-fly list,” Larence testified. “In general, persons on the no-fly list are deemed to be a threat to civil aviation or national security and therefore should be precluded from boarding an aircraft. According to FBI officials, all of these transactions were allowed to proceed because the background checks revealed no prohibiting information under current law.”
According to Larence’s testimony, presented to the Senate Homeland Security Committee in May, in the six years from February 2004 through February 2010, 650 separate individuals on the terrorist watch list went through NICS background checks because they were trying to purchase guns or secure a license for explosives. Because some made multiple transactions, the total number of attempted gun or explosives transactions involving watch-listed terrorists who underwent FBI NICS checks during the period was 1,228.
Ninety-one percent of these transactions--1,119--were approved.
What is going on here? The law, as it currently stands, does not prevent a “known or suspected terrorist” (KST) from purchasing guns and explosives in the United States.
As the GAO’s Larence told the Homeland Security Committee, “being on the watch list does not automatically disqualify someone from possessing or receiving firearms or explosives. Rather, there must be a disqualifying factor such as a felony or immigration violation.”
Daniel D. Roberts, assistant director of the FBI’s criminal justice information services division, told the Homeland Security Committee that the FBI cannot even necessarily stop a terrorist it has under active investigation from purchasing a gun. When a KST under active FBI investigation seeks to purchase a gun and undergoes a NICS check, Roberts told the committee, “the FBI case agent is immediately notified and placed in direct contact with a FBI NICS examiner to determine whether there is any information in the case file, or known to the case agent, that would disqualify the KST under the Brady Act from possessing a firearm. Since this process was initiated in 2004, approximately 1,200 such encounters have occurred, and in approximately 90 percent of those, no prohibiting information was found to deny the transfer.”
When the prospective gun buyer is a foreign national, they also check his immigration status. “If the transferee indicates that he or she is not a U.S. citizen then the NICS also queries the databases of the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that the transferee’s immigration status does not preclude them from obtaining a firearm.”
Now, two things need to be kept in mind in light of these facts: 1) the inalienable individual right of law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms, and 2) the fact that this right exists so Americans can defend their other rights, including their rights to life and property, against, among others, terrorists.
Foreign nationals who are known or reasonably suspected to be terrorists have no moral right to carry or purchase guns in the United States. The GAO testimony indicating that 650 separate individuals on the terrorist watch list had gone through firearms or explosives NICS background checks over a six-year period did not indicate how many of these were foreign nationals and how many were U.S. citizens. I asked GAO if they could provide me with this information, but they were unable to do so by my deadline.
It is a fair assumption, however, that many of these prospective gun purchasers were not American citizens.
When Timothy Healy, director of the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, which runs the terrorist watch list, testified in the Senate Homeland Security Committee last December, he indicated that the overall list (the Terrorist Screening Database) then contained about 400,000 people, of whom less than 1 percent was on the no-fly list. Only about 5 percent of that 1 percent were “U.S. persons”. “Consequently,” Healy testified, “the no-fly list is a very small subset of the terrorist watch list currently containing approximately 3,400 people, of those approximately 170 are U.S. persons.”
Surely, the foreign nationals on the terror watch list, not to mention those on the no-fly list, can be instantly denied any opportunity to buy a gun in the United States without violating either the letter or spirit of the Second Amendment.
((sigh))
Remember, if the terrorists were not allowed to buy guns, they would just break the law. Gun control laws are only effective against the very people for which you don't need them.
--this has been batted around by the anti-gun people for a couple of years--the key to the matter is that the "no-fly" list is a piece of bureaucratic cluttered garbage which has among others, included the late Senator Edward Kennedy, along with any number of common names and mistakes, off of which it is almost impossible to get, even if entered in error---
THe current no-fly list is an abomination....
MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE ON THE LIST FOR NO REASON AT ALL.
A FEW HUNDRED THOUSAND GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES AND PRIVATE CONTRACTORS HAVE THE ABILITY TO ADD NAMES TO THE LIST.... WITH ALMOST NO OVERSIGHT....
***—this has been batted around by the anti-gun people for a couple of years—the key to the matter is that the “no-fly” list is a piece of bureaucratic cluttered garbage which has among others, included the late Senator Edward Kennedy, along with any number of common names and mistakes, off of which it is almost impossible to get, even if entered in error-— ***
Bears Repeating.
CARLEY FIORINA;
Q: During a debate, you said that people on the no-fly list—for alleged terror connections—should be able to go out and buy guns. Isn’t that a security risk?
A: Well, it might be if the no-fly list was better managed. But the truth is Ted Kennedy was on the no-fly list. A 7- year-old boy was on the no-fly list. My wonderful sister-in-law was on the no-fly list.
Q: But there are also some bad guys on the no-fly list. Don’t you want to prevent them from getting guns?
A: Well, sure, if we really knew who the bad guys were, and those were the only people on the no-fly list, but the truth is the no-fly list, by the government’s own admission, is far too broad. So why should a law-abiding US citizen who has the right to bear arms be prevented from doing so because of government incompetence? This is what people are crazed over. We have a government getting bigger and bigger, taxes getting higher and higher, but we don’t see improving competence. We see deteriorating competence.
It doesn’t appear to me that this is a gun control problem but an immigrant control problem. If only 170 people on the list are citizens and 3230 are non citizens, the first solution should be to remove the 3230 non citizens from the country. The 2nd amendment protects the right to own guns but it does not give the right to anyone in the world to be in our country. If a person can’t be trusted to fly, get them out of here.
Carly is right on the mark here. Until there is a documented, reliable procedure for people who are wrongly on the no fly list to remove themselves, we should not be using that list for anything. Not even deciding who can fly.
No you have that wrong Terrorists can buy guns.. Veterans suffering from PTSD as a result of combat with Terrorists and other enemies of the American People cannot buy guns..
More than 100,000 Veterans have been added to the prohibited purchaser list. On the basis of a non-judicated finding by VA that the Veteran suffers from PTSD or other related illnesses
No need to even commit a crime to be banned from purchasing a firearm from and FFL dealers.. As long as you an American Citizen. Just keep in mind once the walking human sacks of crap get the Health Bill operating all those folks out there with personal medical information will find themselves in the same boat as Veterans (Their records will be "resricted access public information" ). Then it will be their turn to be denied the right to purchase a firearm from an FFL dealer depending upon their doctors whim.
W
http://www.vlrc.org/articles/119.html
W
He was railing against this "terrible loophole", in that people on the double-secret-probation no-fly list aren't automatically banned from purchasing firearms.
Of course, he never mentioned that only Regime insiders know who is on the no-fly list, or why, or how to have names removed.
It's a fascist attack on the 2nd Amendment, nothing more.
There is no court oversight and no appeal process for people on that list.
A faceless bureaucrat could put anyone on that list for any reason and it would stop that person from exercising their second amendment rights.
Dangerous terrorists should be arrested and prosecuted. Foreigners with terrorists ties should be deported.
You can’t restrict a person’s constitutional rights because they might do something in the future.
Being on the no-fly list does not make you a terrorist.
Flying is not considered a constitutionally-guaranteed right, so the government has taken on itself the power to prevent you from flying if they merely SUSPECT you might be a bad person.
You know they’d do that for guns, if it wasn’t for the fact that gun ownership is constitutionally guaranteed, so they need actual evidence to keep you from buying a gun.
The fact that Ted Kennedy was on the no-fly list shouldn’t surprise anyone.
He should have been on the No-Drive list as well.
“You can’t restrict a person’s constitutional rights because they might do something in the future.”
We’ve already lost that argument. Anyone with a restraining order has to give up all his guns. Ask any divorce lawyer how easy it is for the wife to get one of these things. There are probably more people with a RO than are on the no-fly list.
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