Canada | PROBABLE CAUSE

The Terror Gap

As the citizens of Canada mourn the murders of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent and Cpl. Nathan Cirillo by terrorists, it’s important to note that in the U.S., a suspect on the FBI’s Terrorist Watch List is considered too dangerous to fly on an airplane, but he or she can still buy guns freely.

The Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibits certain people from possessing a firearm. The possession of any firearm by one of these “prohibited persons” is a felony offense. It is also a felony for any person, including a registered Federal Firearms Licensee to sell or otherwise transfer any firearm to a person knowing or having “reasonable cause” to believe that the person receiving the firearm is prohibited from firearm possession.

There are nine categories of persons prohibited from possessing firearms under the Gun Control Act. According to government data, however, many suspected terrorists have legally bought weapons since 2004, thanks to the “terror gap” in federal law.

Under current laws, if a background check reveals that your name is on the national terrorism watch list, you’re still free to walk out of a gun dealership with a firearm in your hands — as long as you don’t have a criminal or mental health record.

The terrorist watch list of about 450,000 people includes suspected members of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, terror financiers, terror recruiters and people who attended training camps. People’s names are added to and removed from the watch list every day, and most people never know whether they’re on it.

Data from the Government Accountability Office show that between 2004 and 2010, people on terrorism watch lists tried to buy guns and explosives more than 1,400 times. They succeeded in more than 90 percent of those cases, or 1,321 times.

In 2013, 247 people who were allowed to buy weapons did so after going through required background checks as required by federal law.

Anyone with a brain and an ounce of common sense could not possibly understand why those on the terrorist watch list can still legally purchase firearms. Yet, for years, our politicians have done nothing to remedy this unbelievable situation, while giving lip service to the phrase “protecting the Homeland.”

In my last blog I wrote about John Rydberg, a sex-offender from Minnesota, who had a long string of offenses, including a 1975 assault in which he broke into a rural Wisconsin home and raped a young couple as their son slept upstairs. Four years later, during his second escape from treatment, he raped a Minnesota woman at knifepoint in front of her children. Rydberg admitted to counselors that he committed more than 90 sex offenses, mostly involving voyeurism or exposing himself. The 69-year-old Rydberg is at the center of a contentious debate between those who advocate for releasing predatory sex offenders after they have served their sentence, and those who favor indeterminate prison sentences.

Now, legislators in the Minnesota House of Representatives have written a bill that would keep the most predatory sex offenders in prison instead of diverting them to expensive and controversial state civil commitment programs in overcrowded treatment centers, which could lead to supervised release. Under the bill, convicted offenders would face open-ended “indeterminate” prison sentences if members of a jury found them to be predatory––meaning they lack control over sexual impulses and pose a danger to others. Such offenders would have to serve at least twice the recommended sentence and could be released only if the corrections commissioner determined they were no longer a threat to society. If the bill becomes law, it would mark a return to the type of sentencing Minnesota had 17 years ago.

UPDATE:

William Melchert-Dinkel, a former nurse from Faribault, Minnesota, was convicted yesterday of two felonies when a judge ruled he had used the Internet to advise and encourage the suicides of Mark Drybrough of Coventry, England, and Nadia Kajouji of Ottawa, Canada. Drybrough hanged himself in 2005, and Kajouji jumped into a frozen river in 2008. Melchart-Dinkel, posing as a suicide nurse, tried to persuade the victims to hang themselves while he watched via webcam. While Melchart-Dinkel was charged with only two counts, he chatted online with ten suicidal people, five of whom killed themselves.

His defense attorney argued that Melchert-Dinkel’s writings didn’t materially assist the suicides and constituted protected free speech. The judge rejected that argument noting that inciting people to commit suicide is considered “Lethal Advocacy,” which isn’t protected by the First Amendment because it goes against the government’s compelling interest in protecting the lives of vulnerable citizens. If Melchert-Dinkel had merely written a political or religious opinion, the judge wrote, he would have been protected.

The defense plans to appeal the ruling.