Freedom lives!

We've all heard the horror stories about "lost liberties," about court suppression of, and police-state tactics against, nonviolent demonstrators, about how the "Traitor" - sorry, "Patriot" - Act allows all sorts of government poking and prodding into our lives, powers recently expanded even further.

But fear not, oh ye Chicken Littles, for there is indeed one area of freedom, of privacy, which the Great Ashcroft has kept unsullied and pure: your right to buy guns. Yes, indeed, friends, your homes may be searched without you being told even after the fact, your library records, your financial dealings, all aspects of your personal life can be examined in secret, you can be declared an "enemy combatant" and whisked off to who knows where for who knows how long without access to family or legal counsel - but by God! no one will dare touch your sacred right to amass an arsenal.

Under current law, the FBI does a background check on gun purchasers. One of the purposes of this is to see if the person being checked is on the Bureau's "watch list" of suspected terrorists. They can't be stopped from purchasing a gun just for being on the list (which is good - suspicion still shouldn't be proof, even now); there would have to be some other cause specified by law. But the idea is the Bureau would know that so-and-so, suspected terrorist, tried to buy a gun. Such background checks are now kept on file for 90 days.

However, Justice Department regulations promulgated by John Ashcroft specifically forbid the FBI from telling local law enforcement agencies about any such discovery, even if the sale is completed. To do so, apparently, would be an invasion of privacy of "legitimate gun owners." The policy was established at the behest of the NRA, according to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

The gaga gun lovers are on a roll. A provision in an omnibus spending bill now approaching approval in Congress would reduce the time the FBI keeps background checks from 90 days to just 24 hours.

Peter Hamm, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said government auditors concluded last year that the FBI would not be able to go back and trace fraudulent transactions or mistaken approvals if the records are destroyed too quickly.

"It's paranoia, frankly, right-wing paranoia that fuels this sense that these records need to be quickly destroyed," he said. "There is no sensible, sound public policy reason to destroy these records quickly."

As if to prove Hamm's contention, chief NRA lobbyist Chris Cox called the change "a big step in the right direction." One can only wonder how far he'd like to go in that "direction."

Actually, a hint might be found in an email alert from Brady E-Action Response (BEAR), a project of the Brady Center, which says there are "reports that the Republican leadership is trying to put language in the omnibus appropriations bill that would undermine the ATF's ability to enforce the nation's gun laws. The language is from the so-called Tiahrt amendment that NRA allies have been pushing." (No link because it came in an email.)

The Tiahrt amendment would among other things, ban BATF (the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives) from conducting physical inventories of gun dealers, from requiring them to provide documentation for guns sold in a specific period, and from denying licenses to dealers whose sales fall below a certain level. The net effect would make it far more difficult to trace so-called "lost" (usually illegally-sold) and other illicit guns.

Ross Tiahrt (R-KS), the sponsor, admitted that the amendment was mostly drafted by the NRA and asserted, bizarrely, that NRA's support proved that legitimate gun dealers endorsed it. However, it's worth noting that BATF had identified Bull's Eye Shooter Supply of Tacoma, WA, as a problem dealer - unable to account for 238 "missing" guns - even before it became the source of the guns used by DC snipers John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo, neither one of who should have been able to buy those weapons. Had Tiahrt's bill been law, none of that would have been known. Just who is being protected by this proposal?

(It also serves to demonstrate the massive, unbelievable hypocrisy of the NRA, which claims a 24-hour period for holding background checks presents no problem because the government can still trace illegally-sold arms through records arms dealers are required to keep - the same sort of records the NRA-drafted Tiahrt amendment would bar government law enforcement from seeing!)

But it doesn't matter, does it, because, as you can see, your privacy is safe. Happiness is a warm gun.

Footnote: There are any number of versions of the Chicken Little story. I choose to use a nonviolent one. Kind of trying to strike a balance here, y'know?