When I think of Ashcroft and W. Bush, my stomach turns. Clinton chose women to do it (literally) to, these guys do it (figuratively) to the country.
U.S. blocks gun-records probe
FBI SAYS RULING IS POLICY
REVERSAL
BY FOX BUTTERFIELD
New York Times
The Justice Department has refused to let the
FBI check its records to determine whether
any of the 1,200 people detained after the
Sept. 11 attacks had bought guns, according to
FBI and Justice Department officials.
The department made the decision in October
after the FBI asked to examine the records.
Mindy Tucker, a Justice Department press
officer, said the request was rejected after
several senior officials decided that the law
creating the background-check system did not
permit the use of the records to investigate
individuals.
Several officials said that was a policy reversal.
The decision meshes with Attorney General
John Ashcroft's support of gun rights and his
previous opposition to the government's use of
background-check records. As a senator from
Missouri, Ashcroft voted to destroy such
records immediately after the background
check, but the measure was defeated.
The Justice Department's action has frustrated
some FBI and other law enforcement officials
who say it puts the department at odds with its
own priority to aggressively pursue individuals
suspected of links to terrorism.
The International Association of Chiefs of
Police has written a letter to the FBI opposing Ashcroft's policy on
gun records.
``This is absurd and unconscionable,'' said Larry Todd, the police
chief of Los Gatos and a member of the association's firearms
committee.
The decision, Todd said, ``sounds to me like it was made for narrow
political reasons based on a right-to-bear-arms mentality.''
Among those in the Justice Department who opposed letting the FBI
use the records were Viet Dinh, the assistant attorney general for legal
policy and a political appointee close to Ashcroft, Tucker said.
Until now, FBI officials said, it was permissible to check the records if
someone who had been approved to buy a gun should not have been
allowed to.
The prohibited categories include illegal immigrants and people in the
country for less than 90 days.
FBI officials believed that many detainees fell into those groups.
But in what several officials called a reversal of existing procedure,
Dinh ruled that these checks were improper, reasoning that they
would violate the privacy rights of these foreigners.
``It is like there is a gun-rights exception to the war on terrorism,'' said
Mathew Nosanchuk, litigation director for the Violence Policy
Center, a gun-control group.
FBI officials say the records are now being automatically purged from
the bureau's computers after 90 days.
So a search conducted now to see if a detainee bought a gun before
Sept. 11 would probably cover only a short time period. |
