Stop the Lautenberg gun grab

GUEST EDITORIAL

BELLEVUE — Gun hater Lautenberg proposes “extraordinary powers” be given to the U.S. Attorney General to limit gun sales.

President Barack Obama and the White House are looking the other way as Lautenberg seeks to ban guns from 1 million US citizens on a secret FBI terrorist watch list.

Obama has deliberately and repeatedly lied to America’s 90 million gun owners across the country when he insisted that he would not try to take away anyone’s firearms.

Now Obama’s silence endorses Lautenberg’s latest attempt at banning guns.

Lautenberg has now introduced bill Senate Bill 1317, which would give the attorney general the discretion to block gun sales to people on terror watch lists. We must defeat this bill from giving extraordinary powers to limit gun sales to the Attorney General.

The names of the people on the watch list are secret, and Lautenberg said he was frustrated by the F.B.I.’s refusal to disclose to investigators details and specific cases of gun purchases beyond the aggregate data.

Lautenberg requested the gun grab study from the Government Accountability Office. He is using statistics, compiled in the report that is scheduled for public release next week to invade US citizen’s privacy and put more restrictions on the Second Amendment.

Lautenberg said he wanted a better understanding of who is being allowed to buy guns.

How you ask? Trial by innuendo and misinformation that has put 1 million Americans and maybe even you on a terrorist watch list without your knowledge. People placed on this government’s terrorist watch list can be stopped from getting on a plane or getting a visa, and will also be stopped from buying a gun.

Lautenberg wants gun purchases stopped for just being on the list. Current law states federal officials must find some other disqualification of a would-be gun buyer, like being a felon, an illegal alien or a drug addict.

Is your name on the list and can you get it removed?

The government’s consolidated watch list, used to identify people suspected of links to terrorists, has grown to more than one million names since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It also has drawn widespread criticism over the prevalence of mistaken identities and unclear links to terrorism.

A CNN story raises questions about mistaken identities on the list — James Robinson is a retired Air National Guard brigadier general and a commercial pilot for a major airline who flies passenger planes around the country. His name is on the terrorist “watch list.”

He has even been certified by the Transportation Security Administration to carry a weapon into the cockpit as part of the government’s defense program should a terrorist try to commandeer a plane.

But there’s one problem: James Robinson, the pilot, has difficulty even getting to his plane because his name is on the government’s terrorist “watch list.”

That means he can’t use an airport kiosk to check in. He can’t do it online. He can’t do it curb side. Instead, like thousands of Americans, whose names match a name or alias used by a suspected terrorist on the list, he must go to the ticket counter and have an agent verify that he is James Robinson, the pilot, and not James Robinson, the terrorist.

“Shocking’s a good word; frustrating,” Robinson — the pilot — said. “I’m carrying a weapon, flying a multimillion-dollar jet with passengers, but I’m still screened as, you know, on the terrorist watch list.”

Like all other threats against our freedoms, we must rise and defeat this bill from giving extraordinary powers to limit gun sales by the Attorney General.