Carolyn McCarthy wants to disarm Ted Kennedy?

Actually, that may not be a bad idea--he is, after all, directly responsible for more innocent deaths than most American gun owners combined--but I digress.

I'm talking about McCarthy's "No Fly, No Buy Act of 2009," which would mandate that anyone on the TSA's "no fly" list also be put on the "prohibited purchaser" list used for a NICS check.

Today, May 13, 2009 at 11:00 a.m. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (NY-04) and Steve Israel (NY-02) will host a press conference to announce the introduction of the No Fly, No Buy Act, which seeks to close the ‘terror gap’ by preventing people whose names appear on the Transportation Security Administration’s terrorist “no fly list” from being eligible to buy guns. At the event, Reps. McCarthy and Israel will be flanked by law enforcement officials and will be joined by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence to highlight the importance of keeping guns out of the hands of people that are known or suspected terrorists and their continued commitment to fighting to strengthen gun violence prevention laws that protect police and our communities.

This seems a bit redundant on McCarthy's part--she is already a co-sponsor of H.R. 2159 (which I discussed here, as did David Codrea, here).

The main difference between the two bills, as far as I can tell (the "No Fly, No Buy" text is not yet available) is that H.R. 2159 would leave it up to the Attorney General to make the decision to cancel the Bill of Rights for an individual, while "No Fly, No Buy" would make it an automatic process. I'm having trouble deciding which of the two bills is more virulently treasonous.

On the one hand, H.R. 2159 would empower the Attorney General (the rabidly anti-rights Attorney General Eric Holder, no less)--an unelected official--to unilaterally cancel a person's Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms. On the other hand, McCarthy's bill would make the notoriously error prone "no fly" list (remember Ted Kennedy, and all these folks?)--not to mention abuse prone--the arbiter of whose rights should be denied.

McCarthy's press release lists some examples that supposedly bolster the case for such legislation. Let's take a look.

Individuals with ties to terrorists have bought guns in the past and used them to kill Americans. Some notable incidents:

In the summer of 2007, six terror suspects were arrested for plotting an attack on Fort Dix after trying to buy an assortment of M-16s, AK-47s, and handguns from a government informant. On December 22, 2008, five of the six suspects were convicted of conspiracy to kill U.S. military personnel - three of those convicted were sentenced yesterday to life in prison without possibility of parole. The sixth suspect pleaded guilty in October 2007 to providing firearms to illegal aliens, and was sentenced to 20 months in prison. In addition, four of the five suspects convicted of conspiracy were also convicted of illegal gun possession.

Except those geniuses hadn't "bought guns in the past and used them to kill Americans." They were caught (with the help of an alert clerk who was suspicious of their "training video" they wanted converted to digital format), before killing anyone, while trying to buy guns on the black market--this legislation would have made exactly zero difference.

On February 23, 1997, Ali Abu Kamal opened fire on the observation deck of the Empire State Building with a handgun purchased in Florida in violation of federal law, killing one tourist and wounding six others before killing himself.

He used a handgun purchased "in violation of federal law"--so we're to believe the killing could have been prevented by making the purchase a violation of two federal laws?

On March 1, 1994, Rashid Baz shot and killed 16-year old Ari Halberstam on an on-ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. Baz was armed with a machine gun, a 9 MM pistol, and a "street sweeper" shotgun.

And the source of the machine gun (which also was bought in violation of federal law) would certainly not have sold it to someone on the list, right?

On November 5, 1990, El Sayed A. Nosair assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane in a Manhattan hotel with a .357 revolver with a defaced serial number. Nosair was linked to the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Gun shops around here are lame--I can never find "a .357 revolver with a defaced serial number" when I go gun shopping.

In other words, not one of McCarthy's examples seems likely to have been preventable by the legislation she is introducing (legislation that would, of course, still be blatantly and evilly unconstitutional, even if it were demonstrably effective at achieving the stated objective). Keep in mind also that to get even those four examples, she had to go back more than eighteen years.

New York state--home of Mayor Bloomberg, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, Rep. Steve Israel, Rep. Peter King (a Republican), Sen. Chuck Schumer, and Sen. Kirsten ("pro-gun") Gillibrand. Maybe Illinois isn't quite as bad, relatively speaking, as I've made it out to be.