WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush does not support the push for firearms "fingerprinting" that has grown from the Washington-area sniper shootings, a spokesman said Tuesday, saying Bush is unconvinced of the technology's accuracy and is concerned about gun owners' privacy.
Besides, added White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, when it comes to new gun controls generally, "How many laws can we really have to stop crime, if people are determined in their heart to violate them no matter how many there are or what they say?" ...
Bush also has concerns about privacy and liberty questions surrounding a national database, which Fleischer likened to the prospect of fingerprinting every American.
"There is an issue about fingerprints of course as a very effective way to catch people who are engaged in robbery or theft," Fleischer said. "Is that to say that every citizen in the United States should be fingerprinted in order to catch robbers and thieves? And these same issues are raised here. The president does believe in the right of law-abiding citizens to own weapons."
Maryland state Sen. Christopher Van Hollen, who pressed for passage the Maryland law and now is a Democratic candidate for Congress, countered that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms itself testifies to the technology's usefulness. He blamed Bush's resistance on an alliance with the NRA.
A July 2001 report by ATF found that even the limited computerized ballistic fingerprints currently available to federal law enforcement officials had produced during the preceding 15 months 8,800 matches linking 17,600 crime scenes.
Gary Mehalik, a spokesman for the Newtown, Conn.-based National Shooting Sports Foundation, elaborated on the gun lobby's accuracy concerns that Bush evidently shares.
"Fingerprints and DNA don't change, but the interaction of firing a cartridge under terrific pressure with high temperatures and forcing one piece of metal through another changes the metal with each pull of the trigger," said Mehalik. "Every time you fire a gun you change the barrel."
Gorovitz said such changes are inconsequential, and the value of ballistic imagery has been proved repeatedly in trials. How many new laws can we have?
He's concerned about privacy?
He has questions about the accuracy of a procedure that has had positive results in fifty percent of cases over the past fifteen months when it isn't in wide use?
Ari Fleischer opposes a national fingerprinting system?
Sorry, have to quote this again, as a philosophical statement coming from an administration that in time of high terror alert and war has assigned large numbers of federal law enforcement agents to California to bust all those desperadoes lawfully keeping cancer patients alive with pot brownies:
"How many laws can we really have to stop crime, if people are determined in their heart to violate them no matter how many there are or what they say?"Dunno. It seems to vary. There are a whole bunch of amendments in the bill of rights, and you guys can't seem to work with those. The rest of us, I suspect, who have to follow laws on a daily basis, might could assimilate gun fingerprinting a little better than warrantless search and seizure or the government's right to indefinitely detain us on a bald assertion of probable cause (or none at all).
Think about it. Get back to us.
You inutterable swine.
via
Counterspinupdate:
President Bush put himself at odds with many law enforcement groups yesterday by questioning the reliability and propriety of databases that help track bullets and shells from crime scenes by recording unique markings when guns are sold.
The skeptical statements about ballistic fingerprinting by White House press secretary Ari Fleischer put the administration on the side of the gun industry at a time when national news is dominated by a Washington area sniper who has killed nine people in two weeks.
Five months ago, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which is overseen by Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, issued a report saying the gun-tracking technology has provided valuable leads for investigators and helped solve many violent crimes involving firearms "which would not have been solved without it."Oh, goody. His own people are telling him this is a good thing.
On a lighter note:
Fleischer was asked at his televised briefing if Bush would consider eating dinner in the Virginia or Maryland suburbs, or making some similar trip, in order to reassure people. Administration officials said later that no such visit is planned.
"When a mom has to physically shield a child when they drop a child off at school, it's frightening for everybody in the region, and the president has tremendous empathy and care about what's happening," Fleischer said. "I just have to resist the temptation to compare the president's travels or actions, because the president obviously travels in such a different security environment than an individual who takes a child to school. It's just hard for me to make that connection."In other words, even though he travels with his own armed guards/human shield, no.
Good luck, mom.
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