President Bush today announced the creation of a new national database to register every gun owner in America in order to better fight the Global War on Terror. Soon every gun in America will be registered by its serial number with the Department of Homeland Security.
According to Michael Chertoff the inconvenience to gun owners will be minimized as the government will enter all homes while the owners are away, search for a gun, and register any that they find. "The homeowners won't even know we were there," says Chertoff, "In addition, Smith & Wesson, Colt, and Winchester have already agreed and supplied us with the serial numbers of all guns sold since 9/11."
President Bush, after receiving some criticism after announcing earlier this year that only guns sold by Americans to persons in other countries would be tracked, decided that the only fair thing to do was to expand the program to all Americans. "I'm the decider see, and I decided that what's good for the goose is nice for the flock. If we are tracking foriegns the only senselessable thing to do is apply the same standard to people here. Because we all want to be treated the same by our government as it treats others in the world" said Bush.
The National Rifle Association announced that it would file suit to stop the registration of guns in America. "We at the NRA believe that the 2nd amendment specifically protects Americans from such measures" said the NRA president. Vice-President Cheney dismissed the NRA as having a pre-9/11 mind-set. Cheney said at an invitation-only public forum today that not giving the government this information would be unpatriotic and that a few crazy gun-loving elites from the Midwest are preventing the government from stopping a known plot to massacre innocent civilians. "We cannot wait for the smoking gun to be just that, a smoking gun" said Cheney. For more on Cheney's reaction see page A12 "Cheney's double barreled argument hits critics head on."
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said that Congress fully supports the President's proposal. "We in Congress stand behind our President on the gun issue and will do our part to make sure that the laws we pass in the future will be fully consistent with whatever President Bush does now." Democrats in Congress reacted to the surprise announcement with muted anger. House Minority Leader Pelosi said, "Like our President, we want to win the war on terror. I will be interested in hearing how President Bush will justify the current proposal in light of the second amendment. I look forward to having hearings."
Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert announced today that hearings on the President's American Gun Lover's protection act, as the gun registration is officially called, have been cancelled due to the inability of investigators to question executive branch officials. Said one investigator who wished to remain anonymous in order to insult someone, "We can't get close to those idiots cause they point guns at us whenever we show up to talk."
During President Bush's press conference today a clearly anger fueled Helen Thomas asked the President if the gun maker’s pending government contracts to supply guns to the American military in Iraq was used as leverage to make them comply. President Bush responded that he has never met any gun makers and doesn't know them personally. Secret Service logs do show some entries to the White House by a well know gun company owner, but the details of where he was and who he spoke to in the White House were not kept. "Once you get in the door of the White House you pretty much have free reign over who you see and where you go" said a Secret Service spokesperson. He added "we don't want to get bogged down in details."
White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said in response to complaints that the government was collecting to much information on the guns dismissed such complaints. "All we have are serial numbers. You would need a completely different database of information to connect those numbers to an actual person." When asked about the existence of such a database today Attorney General Gonzalez said, "I'm not going to rule it out, but we can't talk about our intelligence work."
The program has already been in effect since 9/11 and it's likely that your home will not be searched because it probably already has.
***Updated to run thru a spell check - I guess I don't know how to spell 'announced'.***