And in the Strange Bedfellows Dept. ...

Well, now, isn’t this interesting? Here’s one issue on which card-carrying ACLU members and card-carrying NRA members may end up carrying the same card. The National Rifle Association has urged the Bush administration to withdraw its support for a bill by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., that would let the attorney general – whoever that might be by the time the bill passes – block gun sales, licenses or permits to terror suspects.

The key phrase here for the NRA, of course, is “gun sales.” The key word for the ACLU is “suspects.”

NRA director Chris Cox objects to the bill’s “arbitrary denial of Second Amendment rights based on mere ‘suspicions’ of a terrorist threat.” I’d wager that most civil libertarians, even those loath to admit that the Second Amendment addresses an individual liberty, would agree that this could infringe the rights of innocent people. It would give the Justice Department power to deny a gun sale to anyone by putting him on a secret terror watch list – the sort of wide discretion in the name of national security the ACLU has been fighting since the Patriot Act was passed in the wake of 9/11. Due process goes out the window if you are a “suspect.” Sound familiar?

As we’ve discovered often during the past few years, a suspect does not necessarily a terrorist make. And as we’ve discovered recently from the FBI’s overzealous issuance of “national security letters,” such powers have a natural tendency to be abused. Literally anyone could end up on such a secret list. “We cannot tear up our rights under the Constitution in the name of fighting terrorism,” writes the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre. Now where have I heard that before?