One government agency that's worth all we pay to support it and more is the Government Accountability Office, known by those who love it and those who hate it as the GAO. The latest inconvenient truth to come from the GAO is that over the past five years, 1,000 people on the government's terrorist list have tried to buy guns and other deadly weapons, and in nine out of 10 cases they've been able to do it.
That's right: if you're on the list you can be collared just as you're about to board a plane, and grounded—as Sen. Ted Kennedy was, because someone was named on the list as T Kennedy—but you can buy a deadly weapon. (Somehow the war on terror always seems to stop short of threatening corporate profits, in this case the gunmakers'.) The GAO noted that one person on the list was able to obtain 50 pounds of explosives.
The problem, says the GAO, is that "…under current law there is no basis to automatically prohibit a person from possessing firearms or explosives because they appear on the terrorist watch list." According to the GAO, if purchasers are not disqualified for other reasons (i.e., are not convicted felons, illegal immigrants or narcotics addicts), having their names on the terrorist list does not make them ineligible to buy guns.
In 2005 the GAO found that 80 percent of people on the list who applied to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for permission to obtain guns had their purchases approved after FBI checks. That study covered February through June, 2004; in that case, 80 percent represented 35 of 44 requests. The larger study covering 2004 to 2009 shows a 10 percent increase (from 80 to 90 percent, with 865 of 963 requests from people on the terrorist watch list approved by the FBI).
In 2005, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey) tried to get the law changed to keep people on the list from getting guns, but opposition from the National Rifle Association thwarted his effort. Lautenberg now vows to try again.
