FBI Wants More Gun Data

What a crock of an argument this is given the facts. If only the FBI had more gun data available, the slaughter perpetuated by Major Nidal Hasan could have been prevented? We already knew more than enough to suspect he was a potential terrorist. He was in contact with known radicals and profiled like a radical Islamist. The notion that a legal gun purchase was his only path to procuring a weapon is absurd. But watch for this one to try and fly through a liberal Congress if it's proposed.

Oh well, may as well make all the Blue Dogs show their cards one more time. Several alreaqdy might not stand a chance of re-election in the years ahead at the rate we're going.

In both cases, the loss of these young soldiers was compounded by a disturbing reality: The assailants had been under investigation by the FBI. In the more recent case, it would be easy enough to point fingers at the FBI. Its counterterrorism agents concluded that Maj. Nidal Hasan's communications with the radical cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi -- an al-Qaeda sympathizer who acted as a "spiritual adviser" to two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers -- were for professional reasons.

A full investigation will reveal whether other red flags should have resulted in preventive action, but here is one thing we already know: A federal law repeatedly supported by Congress interfered with the FBI's ability to find out about Hasan's purchase of a handgun. Knowledge of that purchase might -- and should -- have triggered great scrutiny. And it could have saved lives.

During the Clinton administration, the FBI had access to records of gun background checks for up to 180 days. But in 2003, Congress began requiring that the records be destroyed within 24 hours. This requirement, one of the many restrictions on gun data sponsored by Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), meant that Hasan's investigators were blocked from searching records to determine whether he or other terrorist suspects had purchased guns. When Hasan walked out of Guns Galore in Killeen, Tex., the FBI had only 24 hours to recognize and flag the record -- and then it was gone, forever.

Comments

[Sugar]

The article says gun purchase records would have been an additional red flag and a law preventing their scrutiny denied this information to investigators.

If you're suggesting that argument is a crock, all you need to do is say the following is meaningless and of no consequence to any investigation of terrorism suspects:

"A Government Accountability Office report published in June found that individuals on the terrorist watch list had purchased guns and explosives from licensed dealers in the United States on 865 occasions over the past five years."

Can you say that?

[DavidL]

No citizen should lose ihs rights simply because soem bureaucrat puts hix name of some list. Under the Constitution, rights can only be curtailed bu due process and not by mere bureaucratic whim.

As for Hasan, the FBI ignored enough red flags. Giving the FBI one more red flat to ignore hardly inspires confidence that they would have prevented this terrorist attack.

[MarkJ]

Sugar,

No, we can't say that because you didn't provide the context in which those purchases were made.

Anyway, when did your side start caring about terrorism....except when it came to awarding terrorists heretofore unknown constitutional rights?

Furthermore, what's to stop the Obama administration from adding most anyone--even you--to its terrorist watch list? Any Justice Department that's collectively insane enough to bring KSM to trial in NYC is certainly capable of sticking "wreckers, hoarders, and anti-social parasites" on a watch list. Nice and easy way to pull an end-run around some pesky constitutional amendments, y'know.