Guns Don’t Create Terrorists

EDITORIAL
The San Francisco Examiner

Guns don’t create terrorists

05/08/10 1:00 PM PDT
Mayor Mike is coming for your guns, but not even this
administration " or this Congress " is naive enough to play along.

Bloomberg appealed to Congress this week to address what is
oddly being called the “terror gap,” but which supporters of
Second Amendment rights better describe as “secret government lists.”

The question is this: Should U.S. citizens on terror watch lists
be allowed to purchase firearms?
The answer from Congress is yes (though the Huffington Post and
the New York Times would have you believe it’s just Republicans
obstructing Bloomberg’s “common sense” proposal).

There are as many as one million names on the government’s
various no-fly lists and terror watch lists. (The list has even
included such notables as the late Massachusetts Senator Teddy
Kennedy.) But the government is only very good at keeping lists
of people that owe it money. For any number of reasons it seems
completely incapable of maintaining an effective list of possible terrorists.

For Americans concerned about their right to keep and bear arms,
of whom there are many, this issue is a non-starter. The
government has never been allowed to maintain a list of firearms
purchases for fear that such a list might ultimately be used to
seize those weapons (the government must destroy all background
checks after 24 hours under current law). Gun owners don’t trust
the government to keep lists, and they certainly don’t trust the government
to keep a secret list of people who can’t buy firearms