Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 02:23:32 -0500 To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> Subject: Boston Globe: Ashcroft's gun-coddling hypocrisy Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" ; format="flowed" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by aztec.asu.edu id BAA09061Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 22:28:34 -0500 From: Seth Finkelstein <sethf@sethf.com> To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> Subject: Boston Globe: Ashcroft's gun-coddling hypocrisy User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.15i
[FYI, I thought you'd be interested in this]
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/345/oped/Ashcroft_s_gun_coddling_hyp ocrisyP.shtml
[Boston Globe Online: Print it!]
Ashcroft's gun-coddling hypocrisy
By Thomas Oliphant, 12/11/2001
WASHINGTON
AS THEY SAY in the euphemism business, John Ashcroft ''misspoke.'' He said his hands are tied by the law. As attorney general, he said he has little patience for those who want him ''to enforce some laws and not other laws.''
In fact, what leads him to treat guns with pussyfooting deference in the middle of a war on terrorism - and everything else, no matter how trivial, with a vengeance is not the Constitution or the law but a puny government regulation that he could rewrite in a New York minute.
In fact, there are grounds to feel strongly that the stupid regulation is no obstacle at all. And Ashcroft is closing off important gun-tracing work against the wishes of the FBI, where the exigencies of the moment to not permit the luxury of continuing to indulge in gun politics.
What the FBI did, in the midst of the effort to capture terrorists in our midst and prevent additional attacks, was to begin to check names of people it was interested in for its investigation against gun purchase records.
Sounds like basic police work to me, but the very next day one of the conservative activists in the Ashcroft inner circle, Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh, halted this effort to see who among those considered subjects in the terror investigation were buying guns.
In October, with the investigative machinery in full gear, the FBI had the additional temerity to try again. They were again ordered to get lost.
Apart from common sense, the FBI had an another reason for its requests. In an initial check of some 186 people it found two in federal records who had bought guns within the past 90 days. And no wonder. One of the terrorist manuals found in Kabul last month instructed would-be murderers of Americans `'to obtain an assault rifle legally.''
What Ashcroft did to stop the FBI from investigating further, moreover, is connected to another bit of his gun-coddling fanaticism that adds hypocrisy to the mix. The reason cited for stopping the FBI is said to be a regulation issued in the closing weeks of the Clinton administration by Attorney General Janet Reno.
In her opinion, information that comes in from gun stores and licensed dealers that is employed in background checks of would-be purchasers was not intended to be used for any other law enforcement activity. Reno ruled that the information was available to the FBI only for its regular work in auditing the stuff for things like accuracy.
The notion of Ashcroft citing this regulation is a three-part joke. Most important, it is Ashcroft himself who has tried to gut the meaning of the very regulation he cites as tying his hands. Last summer, it was the proposed reducing of the 90-day holding period for these records to one day, provoking a wave of criticism and legislation to stop him from Representative Jim Moran and Senators Edward Kennedy and Charles Schumer.
Second, it is by no means clear that the Reno regulation would stop the FBI from its work. Such wild-eyed radicals as Senator John McCain assert the contrary. But no one disputes that a regulation isn't the issue anyway; it's Ashcroft's weak will.
Regulations are easily rewritten. And in the wakeup period following Sept. 11, regulations and laws have been changed to clarify and increase federal power by the bucketful. When Kennedy asked Ashcroft if he wanted the power to use gun records in investigating suspected terrorists, he misspoke again and claimed the question was hypothetical.
And there's the key point. All power needs oversight and criticism in a democracy, but most of us have accepted restrictions and inconvenience, and some of us (Muslims especially) face borderline intimidation and repression.
According to FBI officials, their agents are interested in things like credit card receipts and ATM records because they provide a data trail of where people have been and some of what they have been doing. That goes triple for gun records.
And the point also ought to apply to another effort Ashcroft opposed, the campaign led by Senators McCain and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Representatives Mike Castle of Delaware and Carolyn Maloney of New York to close the loophole in the law involving gun shows. Sales by dealers are of course subject to checks, but one-on-one transactions (the No. 2 source after law breaking by gun stores of illegally trafficked weapons, according to law enforcement,) are in the clear.
Kennedy has the odd notion that the government ''must not put the interests of the gun lobby above the nation's public safety.''
Ashcroft, whose contribution to demagoguery was the claim that his critics are aiding terrorists, might like to explain exactly how his gun policies deter them.
This story ran on page A23 of the Boston Globe on 12/11/2001. © Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. ---
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