April 23, 2007

Although it had been planned before the Virginia Tech massacre, it seemed tragically fitting that a group of mayors got together in Jersey City last Wednesday to unveil an ad campaign designed to put pressure on Congress to repeal a federal law, the so-called Tiahrt Amendment, that forbids local governments and police officers from accessing information the Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms collects about gun trafficking.

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In fact, the mayors' campaign - Mayors Against Illegal Guns - has nothing to do with gun control; it is simply about accessing information. But the gun lobby's fixation is so rabid and so complete it has managed to upend one of our most highly prized protections - the right to know - in defense of the only right they think is under attack.

Thanks to a series of amendments attached to spending bills, a particularly onerous method of passing laws no one wants to vote on in their own right, Congress has made it impossible for cities and local police departments to access a broad range of federally collected data that might help them track how illegal guns are getting into their cities - who's buying them and who's selling them.

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The right to know, the right to information, is the backbone of this democracy. We all have a right to see how the illegal gun trade works; we all have the right to judge how well the government is doing in curtailing that trafficking. And no one deserves to see that information as much as the policemen who deal every day with the consequences of illegal guns.

Copyright © 2007 Home News Tribune.