The clever bastards at Think Progress door-stepped National Rifle Association (NRA) members and asked them about the “Terror Gap.” That’s the gulf between the FBI Terrorist Watch List and actual terrorists. Kidding. A bit. Anyway, gun control folk think that preventing people on the list from legally purchasing firearms is a no-brainer. So they went to the NRA convention is search of members with no brains. Or, at the least, easily mislead and misdirected. Who weren’t aware of the issue’s ins and outs. And found them. And then extrapolated from interviews with “dozens of NRA members” that there’s a disconnect between NRA members’ “common sense” opinion on the so-called Terror Gap, and the NRA leadership. A media meme is born. Although The Huffington Post is in a huff, don’t expect this one to gain traction.
The truth is, I always take these kinds of “polls” with a grain of salt. Obviously it’s too easy to interview enough people to get the ones you need. But, on the other hand, the video made a good point. If we could trust the government, I know that’s a bit “if,” but if we could trust the government to not abuse the list, perhaps by implementing some kind of oversight controls, it would be a good thing.
Or it could be the fact that 96% of the names on that list aren’t even U.S. citizens (and most of them live abroad anyway), and the fact that the precious handful on that list that are U.S. citizens cannot (at least in theory) have their rights revoked unless by a court of law.
In other words, it’s just another fruitless policy posited by the obstructionist gun control lobby in an effort to do nothing more than to obfuscate and divert the conversation away from where it really needs to be: on the individuals responsible for the crimes, and not the tools that they use.