San Bernardino

 
Thanks to the National Rifle Association we now lead the world as the source of untraceable firearms ranging from snipers' rifles sent to Macedonia as "agricultural implements" to the handguns discovered entering Canada with a group of would-be terrorists.

Late last year police raided a house in San Bernardino and seized over 800 weapons. Authorities said they would try to trace the source of each one. But since all sales records must be destroyed within 48 hours - an NRA-backed idea - with cash sales the task is impossible. In Pennsylvania, authorities seized 56 guns in the house of a man arrested for killing his girlfriend.

If these weapons stayed in the U.S. it would be our problem. But when they enter the international market and are bought by terrorists and may be used against our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, that is something else. And there is no way to stop these weapons from being shipped abroad.

The NCT averaged three reports daily the first six months of 2006 ranging from a former postal worker in Goleta, Feb. 1, who killed seven postal workers before killing herself, to another man in Indianapolis June 3 who killed seven relatives; and a few hundred others killed for other reasons, mostly because the killer was "upset." Facts are stubborn things and it will be fascinating to see how local NRA people respond.