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| "Dangerous Terrorists Act" |
| 2007-05-09 |
| I found this page linked off of Instapundit.com. I thought it was interesting in regards to the second amendment and government policy regarding gun purchasing and WOT. Your call if you think the readers may find this of interest. As I read it, the bill would allow the Att'y General (in practice, some of his underlings) to find that persons are "appropriately suspected" of aiding terror, and reasonably believed to be likely to use guns in that. If a person is put on that list, they are not forbidden to own guns, but they are put on the instant check list, so they can't buy from a dealer. If that sounds pretty strange ... if a dealer is put on the list his license can be revoked. Or if a person responsible for a licensee's policies is on the list, it can be revoked. In any appeal from any of the above, the government may furnish the court with summaries of its evidence, or redacted versions of it. The court may review the originals only to ensure that the summary is appropriate, but may not rely on the original. (My guess: so the court reads the original, and whether you say it can't rely on it or not, the judge is human and will do so. But the individual challenging only sees the summary). The questionable nature of giving a person legal status because they are "appropriately suspected" of something (the term is undefined -- presumably it's less than probable cause, since if they have that they could arrest him anyway) is clear to me. But the rest is just plain wierd. A terrorist snapping his fingers in frustration because he can't clear the instant check, and protesting that he has a clean record and something must be wrong here, he's gonna write the FBI.... I wonder if the real target isn't dealers and manufacturers. A gun gets into a terrorist's hands ... or is suspected of the same. The mfr knows nothing of it, but you can "appropriately suspect" that they do. Note also that the list would cover anyone "appropriately suspected" of aiding domestic terrorism, too. [UPDATE: .416 Rigby's comment is dead on. As I recall, part of the escalation in the Randy Weaver case involved the local US Atty (whom I knew from Interior days) sending Mrs. Weaver's letters to the FBI for a threat assessment. They came back with a completely unjustified assessment of her as extremely dangerous, etc.. I recall reading FBI's psychologists' assessments of David Koresh's letters, sent out during the siege ... the evaluation was positively wacky. Only made sense if you assumed they were writing so as to please their bosses. Among other things they called him a "virulent paranoid" -- meaning they weren't quite in command of English. And leaving me wondering how you could assess paranoid traits in a fellow whose *reality* was that he was surrounded by government tanks, had the government playing music and wierd noises all night to disrupt his sleep, sending in listening devices to spy on him, testing a device to shut down all radio and TV reception, and testing three battlefield robots in his front yard, etc. His reality at that point was far wilder than fifty paranoid schitzs could cook up with a team effort. And the letters focused upon his prediction that, as part of the end times, there was going to be an earthquake, and he was warning FBI not to let their agents camp below the dam nearby, because he figured the dam would breach. Paranoids do not normally show concern for the safety of their supposed persecutors.]. |
| Posted by:Delphi2005 |