Why is George Protecting Terrorists' 2nd Amendment Rights?

Mr. Bush, in the days after September 11, the FBI began running a check to see if any of the 186 "suspects" the feds had rounded up in the first five days after the attack had purchased any guns in the months leading up to September 11. Using the instant background check files for gun purchases created under the Brady Bill, the FBI immediately found two of the suspects had indeed purchased weapons.

When your attorney general, John Ashcroft, heard about this, he immediately shut the search down. He told the FBI that the background check files could not be used for such a search and

these files were only to be used at the time of a purchase of a gun, not to find out information on law-abiding gun-toting citizens.

So, the FBI was prohibited by Ashcroft from doing any further investigation as to whether those detained?-because they were possible associates of the hijackers?-had procured any weapons in the ninety days leading up to that fateful day. Why? Because even though all their other rights had been thrown out the window, your administration insisted that they still had one constitutional right that you were willing to protect: their sacred Second Amendment rights to bear arms and for the government not to know about it.

Mr. Bush, you can't be serious! Is your administration so gun nutty and in the pocket of the National Rifle Association that, even though you have not given a nanosecond of thought to protecting the rights of any of the Arab-Americans you have arrested, detained, and harassed in the past two years, when it comes to their GUN rights, then all of a sudden you are the biggest defender of constitutional rights and civil liberties that the nation has ever seen?


Do you realize that when most Americans figure out you have protected potential terrorists by stymying a legitimate police investigation, they are going to run you and Dick and Reverend John out of Dodge with their own six-shooters of ballot boxes a-blazing?

I guess none of this should come as a surprise, considering what Mr. Ashcroft was up to in the summer of 2001. Instead of protecting the country from events like the one that was about to take place, the attorney general was busy trying to dismantle the National Instant Criminal background Check System. He said that the government should not be keeping a database on gun owners and wanted the law changed so that the files were kept for only twenty-four hours!

The Senate (and the public) did not find out about Ashcroft's orders to stop the search for the terrorists' gun files until December 2001, when Ashcroft not only proudly admitted to doing this in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but went on to attack anyone who would question his actions to protect the hijackers' gun rights. He told the panel that critics of his anti-terror practices

were "providing ammunition to America's enemies. . . . To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of ?'lost liberty,' my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists."

But who was the one aiding the terrorists, Mr. Bush? An attorney general who won't let the FBI do its job? An attorney general who won't let the police thoroughly investigate what the terrorists

were up to, including the purchasing of weapons?

At that same Senate hearing, Mr. Ashcroft held up what he said was an al Qaeda training manual. "In this manual," he warned, "al Qaeda terrorists are told how to use America's freedom as a weapon against us."

On this point he was correct. One of the freedoms al Qaeda apparently really likes is our Second Amendment.

Another al Qaeda pamphlet that was originally found in terrorist safe houses in Afghanistan heaps praise on the United States. Obviously, Ashcroft missed all of the beautiful irony.

Here's what this al Qaeda training manual says:

• In some countries of the world, especially the USA, firearms training is available to the general public. One should try to join a shooting club if possible and make regular visits to the firing range. There are many firearms courses available to the public in the USA, ranging from one day to two weeks or more.

• Useful courses to learn are sniping, general shooting, and other rifle courses. Handgun courses are useful but only after you have mastered rifles.

• In other countries, e.g. some states of the USA and South Africa, it is perfectly legal for members of the public to own certain types of firearms. If you live in such a country, obtain an assault rifle legally, preferably an AK-47 or variations, learn how to use it properly and go and practice in the areas allowed for such training.

• Respect the laws of the country you are in and avoid dealing in illegal firearms. One can learn to operate many arms legally, so there is no need to spend years in prison for dealing in small, illegal firearms. Learn the most you can according to your circumstances and leave the rest to when you actually go for jihad.

So, Mr. Bush, al Qaeda is apparently plotting to use one of our "freedoms"?-the right to bear arms?-against us.

I truly love how you have rounded up hundreds of people, grabbing them off the streets without notice, throwing them in prison cells, unable to contact lawyers or family and then, for the most part, shipping them out of the country on mere immigration charges. You can waive their Fourth Amendment protection from unlawful search and seizure, their Sixth Amendment rights to an open trial by a jury of their peers and the right to counsel, and their First Amendment rights to speak, assemble, dissent and practice their religion. You believe you have the right to just trash all these rights, but when it comes to the Second Amendment right to own an AK-47?-oh no! THAT right they can have?-and you will defend their right to have it, even after they've flown a plane into a building and killed a bunch of people.

When this story first broke, you naturally got worried that it wouldn't spin the right way to the public (the vast majority of whom want stronger gun laws), so you trotted out a Justice Department spokeswoman to explain to us that the decision had been reached by "senior Justice officials" after they had done an exhaustive study of "the law." Among those spinmeisters was Mr. Viet Dinh?-the assistant attorney general for legal policy. Dinh's justification for blocking the background checks? According to The New York Times , "Mr. Dinh ruled that these checks were improper, reasoning that they would violate the privacy of these foreigners " (my emphasis).

Yes, when it comes to guns, finally the rights of foreigners count for something.

But in July 2002, the truth came out and the General Accounting Office released the Justice Department's actual legal opinion on the matter, dated October 1, 2001, a report that your attorney general had apparently suppressed. What did it say? That the Justice Department's legal advisers had ruled that?-get this?- there was nothing wrong with using the gun background files to check if a suspected terrorist had purchased a gun. Did you read that, Mr. Bush? I'll underline it and put it in bigger type so you can read it nice and slow and easy:


There's nothing wrong with looking to see if a suspected terrorist bought a gun.


Nothing wrong! How shocking! Who else, other than you and John Ashcroft, would think that it's a crime to find out if alleged terrorists were buying guns? (The GAO also reported that 97 percent of illegally purchased guns that were initially approved and then taken back once their mistake was realized would not have been detected if the gun check records had been destroyed in twenty-four hours rather than ninety days.)

Your administration talks of the "phantoms of lost liberty"? Tell that to the men and women who were thrown in jails, not because they were terrorists, but because they were Muslims. And tell me why you think you have the right to find out what books a suspected terrorist is reading, but not what guns he might be packing.

Who, Mr. Bush, is really aiding the terrorists here?

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