• Gun control and terrorism : Condoleezza Rice Gun control and terrorism : Condoleezza Rice Times Union, Albany, N.Y., on gun control and terrorism Gun control advocates are alarmed at a recent report by the General Accountability Office that found
• Gun control and terrorism : Condoleezza Rice
Gun control and terrorism : Condoleezza Rice
Times Union, Albany, N.Y., on gun control and terrorism
Gun control advocates are alarmed at a recent report by the General Accountability Office that found 47 persons on the FBI terrorist watch list were allowed to legally purchase firearms. Gun rights advocates are just as alarmed. They argue that the purchases were legal and that none of the transactions involved any of the six reasons that the law now specifies as grounds for denying a sale.
The latter argument borders on the incredible. The fault here is not that the government has gone overboard in trying to deny citizens their right to bear arms. It’s simply that the law needs to be amended — and quickly — to keep people on the watch list from buying weapons that might be used against citizens.…
The FBI’s Instant Criminal Background Check System, which is used to monitor gun purchases, doesn’t just disqualify felons. Also banned from buying firearms are illegal immigrants, those who have a history of mental illness, and those who have renounced their citizenship, among others. There’s no reason why a new category can’t be added to keep people on the terrorism watch list from getting guns.…
Congress was wrong when it lifted the ban on assault weapons sales recently. It now has a chance to atone for some of that grave misjudgment by amending the background check categories to include those on the terrorism watch list — and to keep the records on file for 10 years, as Sen. (Frank) Lautenberg proposes.
Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press, on Condoleezza Rice
Whatever the Europeans and Asians think of our president and his other top aides, they like our talented new secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. This has led to speculation, just short of certainty, that she would run for president in 2008.
She recently did a lap around the TV talk shows, where her possible presidential ambitions were Topic A. Rice tried to be gently dismissive, saying she had no intentions of running for president, no desire to run for president and didn’t want to run for president.
In Washingtonspeak, these are wink-wink answers. She might just as well have said yes and got it done with, which NBC’s Tim Russert thought she might do when the secretary turned up on “Meet the Press.”
Russert tried and tried until an exasperated Rice said, “I will not run for president of the United States. How’s that?”
In truth, Rice had to say something like that. If she had even halfway hinted an interest, all of her foreign-policy decisions as secretary of state would be seen as somehow boosting her presidential ambitions. She would be endlessly second-guessed.
But if conditions change in late 2007 and early 2008 and Rice decides then to run, it would be churlish to hold her to her promise.
- Provided by the Associated Press
