Salon.com reports that a new gun bill to be voted on soon will not only limit all civil lawsuits, it will also limit the ATF's ability to regulate the industry.
This, in the wake of a recent GAO report that said that at least 36 individuals on the federal terrorist "watch list" have walked into gun shops and bought weapons.
More below.
When Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig introduced his bill last month to shield the gun industry from lawsuits, he claimed it was nearly identical to a similar measure that went down in a series of parliamentary maneuvers on the Senate floor in March 2004. The bill would quash all suits against the gun industry, except where evidence proves a dealer knowingly broke the law. When lawmakers come back from Easter recess, they're expected to take up the legislation, and with Congress more Republican and more pro-gun than it was last year, the bill is considered more likely to pass this time.
But Craig has slipped in a so far widely unnoticed provision that gun industry experts say goes way beyond the one that died in the last Congress. It would bar "administrative proceedings" against the gun industry, which means that along with being immune from most lawsuits, dealers -- even unscrupulous ones -- would no longer have to worry about having their licenses revoked. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives uses such administrative proceedings to regulate the gun industry. But under Craig's provision, the ATF's authority would be greatly curtailed.
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But gun control advocates say they are dumbfounded by the timing of Congress' effort to indemnify the gun industry because it will come just weeks after the release of a troubling report on guns and terrorism. A Government Accountability Office report released earlier this month said that at least 36 individuals on the federal terrorist "watch list" have walked into gun shops and bought weapons. The report makes the current effort in Congress to provide immunity to the industry painfully ironic to the gun control crowd. "It really ought to be an embarrassment that Congress would push this bill in the wake of a report that terrorists are buying guns over the counter," said Dennis Henigan, legal action project director at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Observers say the strange juxtaposition speaks to the momentous clout of the National Rifle Association and the gun industry -- and may have exposed like never before a glaring blind spot in homeland security. Where the Bush administration's "war on terror" has conflicted with the interests and raw political power of the gun lobby, mounting evidence shows that the war consistently loses. Henigan noted that suspects on the government's terror watch list cannot board airplanes or cruise ships, but they can buy assault weapons. "There is no question that this radical pro-gun ideology trumps the war on terror," he said. "It is quite striking."
Some gun law experts say the Bush administration has shown a remarkable willingness to push the edge of the civil liberties envelope, citing the necessities of war -- the "sneak and peak" provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act and the naming of U.S. citizens as "enemy combatants" being prime examples. But as conservatives have consolidated power since 9/11, they have done little to stop would-be terrorists from arming themselves here in the United States. And as they have pursued an agenda that includes an ostensible dedication to preserving the sanctity of the Second Amendment, their success may have had the unintended consequence of making it easier, not harder, for terrorists to get guns.