According to the NRA, there should be no protections, no sanctions, no restrictions that prevent an individual accused or suspected of affiliation with a terrorist organization from purchasing a firearm. The Washington Post reported the findings of a study on the subject after the attacks in Paris last week:
Between 2004 and 2014, suspected terrorists attempted to purchase guns from American dealers at least 2,233 times. And in 2,043 of those cases — 91 percent of the time — they succeeded. There are about 700,000 people on the watch-list — a point that civil libertarians have made to underscore that many on the list may be family members or acquaintances of people with potential terrorist connections.
If a suspect was rejected, it wasn’t because of their supposed connection to terrorism. Suspects were only rejected for reasons such as “felony conviction, under indictment, adjudicated mental health, misdemeanor crime of domestic violence conviction, fugitive from justice and controlled substance abuse,” according to the report.
Efforts to close the loophole face strong opposition from the NRA. As far back as 2007, legislation introduced by the Bush administration to close the loophole was fought by Republicans.
As Salon explains:
The Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act, a bipartisan bill cosponsored by California Senator Dianne Feinstein and New York Rep. Peter King, looks to be a nonstarter in Congress as a majority of Republicans oppose the law originally proposed by the Bush administration in 2007.
“The National Rifle Association is strongly opposed to it and the fact is we have only a handful of Republican co-sponsors,” King told the New York Daily News on Tuesday. “I think that right now it’d be tough to get through,” Kind said in the aftermath of Friday’s terror attacks. “It’s not going to move right now … [there’s] just too much opposition.”
For more on this, read the article from Salon titled: “NRA fail: More than 2,000 people on terror watch list have legally purchased guns in the last 10 years.”
Watch our commentary on the irony of conservative gun worship:
