Guns & Aliens: Should Foreign Nationals Have 2nd Amendment Rights in America? (No!)
by Terry Graham (4/18/07)
Yesterday, I posed this question to Aaron Zellman, head of Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership, who was a guest on Southern California's KCAA-AM's Kevin Shannon talkshow:
SHOULD NON-CITIZENS (i.e., aliens) AND THOSE HOLDING DUAL CITIZENSHIP HAVE THE RIGHT TO BUY, OWN AND CARRY GUNS IN THE UNITED STATES?
My answer is : NO, NO, and NO.
One of the first mass murders I recall took place near UC-Davis about 15 years ago, when a Vietnamese gang orchestrated an invasion of the "Good Guys," a popular electronics/stereo store near campus, to rob patrons and the store. A clerk triggered an alarm, the police surrounded the store, and the foreign gangbangers forced shoppers and employees to lie on the floor, then shot them execution style in the back of their heads. Most died.
And let's not forget the recent mass shooting at a Salt Lake City mall by a Bosnian immigrant. (A reader reminds me that the shootings on the Long Island commuter train and at Appalachian Law School were also perpetrated by gun-toting immigrants. Then there was Wayne Lo, a Taiwanese national who shot six people, killing two while he was a student at Simon's Rock Bard College in Massachusetts in the '90s.)
Why should non-Citizens in America, even those here legally as was alleged Virginia Tech mass murderer and South Korean national Cho, be given the right to purchase firearms while they are in the United States? These individuals may be applying for naturalization, though many are not. The alleged killer Cho (of Virginia Tech) had been in the US with his Korean family for 10 years, yet they haven't bothered to obtain Citizenship, instead maintaining "permanent resident alien" status (the right to work, greencards). Cho, like some 9/11 hijackers, reportedly held an international student visa. Yet he could readily buy a gun with devastating results. (I cannot help but wonder if his reported ranting letters about women and "rich kids" are part of his disaffected stance as an unassimilated immigrant.)
How about foreign gang members, many of whom are legal immigrants holding greencards? WHY ARE THEY able to buy guns legally, as Cho did?
What about foreigners who, even when naturalized as Citizens, choose to maintain "dual Citizenship" by keeping their homeland's citizenship as well? THESE INDIVIDUALS HAVE NOT committed themselves to America. They hold dual loyalties and in fact, many of them have sworn an oath to uphold their own nation's laws. Some have served in their nation's military. If we are engaged in a confrontation, or war, with their home countries, we cannot count on them to support America. Yet they can arm themselves legally on our soil.
We must ask ourselves after many years of immigrants (legal and illegal) murdering Americans with firearms, how do Americans benefit from giving aliens the right to own and bear arms?
In my opinion, no such right should exist. (We must also demand that no "pathway to Citizenship" be handed to the tens of millions of illegals now in the country, which under current law would give them the right to buy guns. Deport them. Neither should our public servants, including President Bush, expedite Citizenship tracks for legal immigrants. We need a moratorium on immigration, and public servants need to do our bidding -- which every poll says is to enforce existing laws, secure ports and borders, severely limit legal immigration, and deport illegals.)
What was Mr. Zellman's (JPFO.org) response to my query? He initially spoke of how background check laws/standards help us know if an alien meets requirements for gun ownership, a comment I find incredibly naive given the fact that there is virtually no way we can access criminal and mental health records from home countries (not to mention here, where unconfirmed aliases abound in police reports and medical records are private).
Zellman later suggested that individual States, if they so choose, could pass State laws banning foreign nationals from owning guns, thus preserving State's Rights under the 10th Amendment.
Americans, what say you?
© 2007. Terry Graham.
Permission is granted to reproduce this article as is, with proper attribution. Any other usage, without written permission by Terry Graham, violates copyright law. Terry, an American Citizen, was assaulted by a Mexican national (permanent resident alien) while participating in a public forum on immigration sponsored by First Data Corporation/Western Union in Denver on July 22, 2004. She can be reached at teegra22@yahoo.com
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