How is this tough on Crime/Terrorism? GOP Zealotry

Shouldn't FBI agents have the authority to block sales of guns and explosives to those on the terror watchlists -- and deemed too dangerous to fly? I actually believe that they should," New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg told Unnited States Senators. Federal law currently only allows the government to block guns sales for a very limited number of reasons, and being on that list is not one of them.

Bloomberg's appeal to what he called "common sense" at a congressional hearing Wednesday morning failed to sway two Republican senators who said that giving the government the ability to block the purchase of guns by suspected terrorists would undermine the Second Amendment's right to bear arms.


Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), the sponsor of a bill that would close what Bloomberg has called a "terror gap" countered that "this common-sense legislation is not anti-gun -- it's anti-terrorist."
 
But GOP Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina wouldn't go along.


Admitting that "at first blush" the bill "seems to be an obvious step that we should take," Collins said that many people on the FBI's watchlist don't belong there. "None of us wants a terrorist to be able to purchase a gun, but neither should we want to infringe upon a Constitutional right of law-abiding Americans," she said.

BUT, like any good zealot, Graham likes to pick and choose which rights he wants to zealously protect.  Graham wasn't nearly as concerned about rights when he launched into a disquisition on the treatment of American citizens accused of terrorism. "I am all into national security," he said. "I want them to stop reading these guys Miranda rights."
 

As for the Second Amendment concerns, Bloomberg said in his testimony: "Our founding fathers did not write the Second Amendment to empower people who wanted to terrorize a free state; they wrote it to protect people who could defend 'the security of a free state.' Today, the security of our free state is being tested by terrorists."
 
I couldn't agree more!