Hypocrisy From the Barrel of a Gun
While listening to an OnPoint discussion of pending federal gun legislation this morning, I was struck by a not-too-surprising hypocrisy coming from the Republican Party. Luckily, this hypocrisy is easily proved just by looking at the GOP's own official platform (link is a PDF), approved at their 2004 National Convention.
On the issue of the US PATRIOT Act and the expanded powers for federal law enforcement agencies, the platform states:
To protect our people, President Bush is leading America, staying on the
offensive against threats within our own country...The PATRIOT Act is being used to track terrorist activity and to break up terror cells. Now, the FBI can use tools that have been long available to fight organized crime and drug trafficking, but could not be used in the past to fight terrorism. Intelligence and law enforcement officials are sharing information as never before.
As such, I believe it was former Attorney General John Ashcroft who said something about "law abiding citizens having nothing to fear" in response to liberal fears about civil liberties infringements by the law.
Yet, in the very same Platform the GOP states:
We oppose federal licensing of lawabiding gun owners and national gun registration as a violation of the Second Amendment and an invasion of privacy of honest citizens.
This statement directly relates to legislation recently introduced by Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) which would provide grants and other incentives to help states forward all relevant records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). It centralizes gun ownership information at the national level, and because of this the GOP is opposed.
Why would law abiding gun owners have anything to fear?
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