Aw, Hell No!

Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York and noted Toole, has decided to try and get the Army to act as a stooge for the ATF.

"After Jared Loughner was interviewed by the military, he was rejected from the Army because of excessive drug use. Now, by law, by law that's on the books, he should not have been allowed to buy a gun," Schumer told NBC's "Meet the Press."

"But the law doesn't require the military to notify the FBI about that, and in this case they didn't. So I --this morning -- I'm writing the administration and urging that that be done, that the military notify the FBI when someone is rejected from the military for excessive drug use and that be added to the FBI database," Schumer said.

So basically, Chuckie wants military recruiters to inform on prospective recruits if they admit to drug use so that they can be deprived of their constitutional right to keep and bear arms.  This is to be used to feed the list of people who can't have a gun.  In this instance they would be put on it without a trial, adjudication, or whatever.  If a recruiter made the subjective decision to reject someone due to an unacceptable amount of drug use in the past, they would lose a constitutionally protected right.


You see, when someone who wants to join our military talks to a recruiter and they get to the point they're filling out paperwork, a series of questions is asked. When I went in, among a lot of others, were such things as:


Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
Are you now or have you ever been a homosexual?
Do you now or have you ever used an illegal drug?


The Army uses these questions to weed out recruits who, in the eyes of military leadership, shouldn't be in uniform.  The Communist question went away a few years after the Berlin Wall went away.  I imagine that if the homosexual question is still asked its days are numbered.


If Congress and the ATF pressure DOD to inform on their own recruits, then I say they stop asking the drug question.  Anyone who has been using in the months prior to recruitment will be caught out when they take a drug test anyway.  


Chuckles, I'm going to explain this to you, and I'll try to use small words, but I'll provide links to any advanced concepts:


Two words:  Posse Comitatis.  The United States Military is not now, nor has it been for a century and a half, a police force charged with enforcing the laws of the land on the civilian population.  If Congress and the courts want to exclude drug users from buying a gun from a licensed gun dealer, so be it. But soldiers are not policemen.  The job of a military recruiter is to find young people who have the potential to make good service members and convince them to join up.  They are not there to watch out for people who use drugs and inform a law enforcement agency.  If they start doing this, I expect that even kids who are squeaky clean will stop walking down to the recruiter office.


Senator Schumer, I suggest that before you start using the blood of American citizens to further your agenda, you figure out if what you want to do is legal, and whether it actually makes sense.  Is it worth making every recruiter who comes to a high school into a narcotics officer in order to keep people from buying a gun?