Yeah, Ashcroft loves guns, especially Assault Weapons!!! Ashcroft wants to make
sure ex-felons get their guns back as smoothly as possible. Did you know ex-felons cannot
vote in this country? But they can own and carry guns! Have fun!!! Hope you don't run into one with a gun.
Article by Marie Cocco. Marie Cocco's e-mail address is
cocco@newsday.com.
THE MARQUEE names for the cabaret that is the Ashcroft
nomination hearings are Ronnie White and Bob Jones.
White is the African-American judge whom John Ashcroft,
the attorney general designate, smeared as "pro-criminal" because of a
few departures White made from his customary practice of upholding
death sentences. Jones needs little introduction, since his
university-which had banned interracial dating and promotes hatred of
Catholics, among others-has been much in the news. It was a favored
venue for speech-making by Ashcroft and his prospective boss,
president-elect George W. Bush.
These are the big-name attractions as the hearings get under way today.
But there is someone else the senators of the Judiciary Committee
should ask Ashcroft about: Michael McDermott.
McDermott is the mentally troubled man who shot up his office in
suburban Boston the day after Christmas, killing seven people in what
prosecutors described as a "methodical and premeditated" assault on his
co-workers.
McDermott owned an arsenal. He put it to use that day. His collection
included an AK-47 assault rifle; a .40-cal. rifle; a 12-gauge shotgun; a
.32-cal. handgun. McDermott had no criminal record and no history of
involuntary commitment to a psychiatric institution. And so, although
he had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals at least three times,
McDermott apparently bought all the guns, including his trusty AK-47,
legally.
Just as John Ashcroft would have it.
Ashcroft does not believe the government has the authority to bar
private citizens from owning guns. He is a champion among that
infinitesimal minority of Americans who-contrary to repeated rulings
by federal courts and the U.S.
Supreme Court-believe the Second Amendment, notwithstanding its
mention of a "well-regulated militia," is a clause that effectively bans
gun control and favors armed individuals as a check against
government.
Ashcroft agrees with people like Larry Pratt. Pratt was too extreme to
be allowed to stay in Pat Buchanan's 1996 presidential campaign. When
it was revealed that the head of Gun Owners of America associated
with militia leaders and white supremacists, Pratt was drummed out.
Two years later, according to the Violence Policy Center, Ashcroft
penned a note to Pratt vowing to dilute an anti-crime measure that had
been supported by no less a defender of gun rights than Senate
Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). It would have
given federal law- enforcement authorities the ability to use the
racketeering statutes to go after illegal gun traffickers.
Not law-abiding dealers nor innocent hunters. Illegal traffickers. The
provision eventually was weakened.
Ashcroft sided with the gun lobby and against the FBI on the Brady
Law, which requires criminal-background checks on gun purchasers.
He voted, over law-enforcement opposition, to shorten the length of
time officials are given to conduct the checks. He opposes current laws
requiring the record of checks to be kept for six months. This is the
FBI's way to ensure that the law works properly-that is, denying guns
to criminals and others banned from owning them.
Ashcroft is against all the usual half-measures the Congress sometimes
tries to take to reduce the number of guns, or at least the deadly
firepower, that is accessible to people like McDermott. He is against the
1994 ban on newly manufactured assault weapons, which expires in
2004 and will thus require the next attorney general's backing to be
extended. He voted twice against banning the import of high-capacity
magazines for assault weapons that remain in circulation. He voted
against regulating gun sales on the Internet.
He supported requiring the FBI to create a special database of felons
who have won court approval to get their gun-rights back, to ensure
that the felons' efforts to purchase new guns go smoothly. He
supported a referendum in Missouri-a statewide ballot initiative the
voters defeated-that would have allowed just about anyone, including
stalkers, to carry a concealed weapon.
Bush keeps talking about opposition to his controversial nominees as if
it is an unseemly plot against the goodness he knows is in their "hearts."
But the problem with Ashcroft is not in his heart. It is in his public
record.
Reviewing it makes you wonder who, of the characters on stage at the
hearings this week, really has a record that can be fairly described as
pro-criminal.
newsday.com |
