and that's putting it far more lightly than I believe. The law passed by Congress years ago (hint: before Ashcroft became AG) states those registration papers can not be kept by law enforcement for more than a 90 days. If Ashcroft ignored that law, you and your similiarly uninformed kind would be skewering him for disregarding the law. In that case, you'd be right but not in this one.

Here's a exerpt from a recent article on the topic. BTW: during his testimony this week, Ashcroft said he'd be willing to work with Congress to change the law but until then, he won't violate the law as written.

"Justice Dept. Bars Use of Gun Checks in Terror Inquiry
By FOX BUTTERFIELD

The Justice Department has refused to let the F.B.I. check its records to determine whether any of the 1,200 people detained after the Sept. 11 attacks had bought guns, F.B.I. and Justice Department officials say.

The department made the decision in October after the F.B.I. asked to examine the records it maintains on background checks to see if any detainees had purchased guns in the United States.

Mindy Tucker, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said the request was rejected after several senior officials decided that the law creating the background check system did not permit the use of the records to investigate individuals."

The article goes on to state:

"We intend to use every legal tool available to protect American lives," John Collingwood, an assistant director of the F.B.I., said, but he added that "applicable law does not permit" the background check records to be used "for this purpose."

Further on, it states:

"Yesterday, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, wrote to Mr. Ashcroft, saying, "If the Department of Justice is not using the N.I.C.S. database as part of the investigation, I am very concerned that the F.B.I. is being unnecessarily limited in the tools that it can use to bring the perpetrators of this heinous attack to justice." N.I.C.S. is the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

The conflict over how to deal with the records of background checks of gun buyers predates Sept. 11.

Under the system, a gun dealer faxes in a form filled out by a prospective buyer to either the F.B.I. or a state law enforcement agency; the authorities then run a computerized search to make sure that the buyer does not fall into one of several categories of people prohibited from buying a gun.

The records of those background checks, known as audit logs, have long been a point of contention for some gun-rights advocates, who contend that they create a de facto national gun registry.

The F.B.I. preserves the records for 90 days; it has said it needs at least that long for investigative purposes and to make sure the system works. The Justice Department, however, is expected to announce soon that it is switching to destruction of the records within 24 hours.

On Sept. 16, said Mr. Collingwood, the assistant F.B.I. director, the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms asked the F.B.I. to check a list of 186 names of detainees against the background check records.

The F.B.I. got two "hits," other F.B.I. officials said, meaning that two of the detainees had been approved to buy guns.

But the next day, after a further review by F.B.I. and Justice Department lawyers, the bureau's unit that maintains the records "was advised that reviews for this purpose were not permissible under the current statutory and regulatory scheme," Mr. Collingwood said.

"That was confirmed after a request that the matter be reviewed again," Mr. Collingwood added, apparently a reference to what other F.B.I. officials said was an appeal to the Justice Department by a senior F.B.I. official.

Among those in the Justice Department who opposed letting the F.B.I. use the records were Viet Dinh, the assistant attorney general for legal policy and a political appointee close to Mr. Ashcroft, as well as a second top department official, Ms. Tucker said.

The dispute about the records centers on two issues: which people can be checked and how the records may be used by investigators.

Until now, F.B.I. officials said, it was permissible to check the records if someone who had been approved to buy a gun should not have been allowed to. The prohibited categories include foreigners of several different statuses, like an illegal immigrant or someone in the country for less than 90 days. Investigators believed that many detainees fell into those groups and sought clearance to check whether they had bought guns.

But in what several officials called a reversal of existing procedure, Mr. Dinh ruled that these checks were improper, reasoning that they would violate the privacy of these foreigners. F.B.I. officials said foreigners normally did not have privacy rights unless they have achieved permanent resident status.

"It is like there is a gun-rights exception to the war on terrorism," said Mathew Nosanchuk, litigation director for the Violence Policy Center, a gun control group in Washington. Mr. Nosanchuk was a Justice Department lawyer in the Clinton administration who helped to write many of the gun-records regulations.

The records may be reviewed to assure the system functions properly, but a second issue is whether they can be used by investigators.

Current rules state the records can be used "for the purposes of investigating, prosecuting, and/or enforcing violations of criminal or civil law that may come to light during N.I.C.S. operations."

Mr. Nosanchuk said, "A fair interpretation is that if there is a terrorist act, and that if you have a basis to think a person was in a prohibited category, it would be O.K. for law enforcement to check the records to see if a person purchased a gun."

Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, declined to comment on whether the Justice Department's ruling may have hindered the Sept. 11 investigation to protect gun rights.

But he said the fact that the F.B.I.'s initial check found that two detainees had been wrongly cleared to buy guns was "testament to the lack of attention focused on building the N.I.C.S. by the Clinton administration."

While it cannot be determined how many detainees bought guns, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms did check some names against its database of guns that have been used in the commission of crimes. It found that 34 guns seized in crimes had been bought at some point by people on the detainee list, an A.T.F. agent said."

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Someone that wants to get weapons can go underground and find them in a variety of sources. They can steal them from legal gun owners, buy them from someone who'd stolen them, or even smuggle them into the country just like illegal drugs. Anyone who believes passing more laws will stop the problem is so foolishly naive as to be pathetic. Look at all the anti-drug laws on the books and see how effective they've been at stopping the problem.

As for Ashcroft, I don't always agree with his personal views but believe he's following the law. He got skewered during his confirmation hearings over his religious views and whether they would interfere with him enforcing the law. Now, he's getting skewered for actually enforcing the law as written by Congress. It's things like that which reinforce my decision to never again vote for a Democrat as long as I live.