News flash: Newsweek still supports forcible citizen disarmament

In a development that should shock no one, Newsweek is pushing a citizen disarmament measure. This time, it's the "Disarm Anyone the Attorney General Designates as a 'Terrorist'" bill (either H.R. 2074 or S. 1237). Specifically, the article takes Senator McCain (himself no friend to private firearm ownership) to task for not specifically endorsing the bill.

But does that extend to gun rights for suspected terrorists? His campaign won't say where he stands on a bill to eliminate a gun-control loophole that even the Bush administration wants closed: a gap in federal law that inhibits the government from stopping people on terrorist watch lists from buying guns.

I love, by the way, that reference to "even the Bush administration"--as if this administration has a proud record of standing against statist power grabs. I've made no secret of what I think of attempts to give the Attorney General--an unelected official--the power to unilaterally voiding an American citizen's Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental, absolute human right of the individual to keep and bear arms, without a conviction, without an arrest, without even criminal charges being filed. Then, of course, there's the little fact of the "terrorist watch list" having ballooned to something like a million names by now. Yeah--that sounds like a list that constitutes a reliable grounds for denying fundamental rights.

Frankly, I don't think Newsweek writer Mark Hosenball has much to worry about--I imagine McCain would sign such a bill without much of a second thought. Ah--the "land of the free."