Via Snowflakes in Hell we have another bullshit story on the terrorist watch list as it relates to people buying guns…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_watch_list_guns
Apparently 800 people who are on the watch list have purchased firearms. Oh my God it’s time to start shitting your pants people that’s 800 people! Wait a minute there are 400,000 names on that list. So less than one percent (in fact .2 percent) of people on the list have been allowed to buy guns.
Further thinking led me to look up the population of the United States which, according to Google, is roughly 304,059,724 people. With 400,000 names on the terrorist watch list that means .1 percent of the entire population of the United States is on this list. That number doesn’t look like much but considering one tenth of one percent of the entire population of this country is suspected of being a terrorist that’s significant.
Anyways back to the bullshit here as pointed out on Snowflakes in Hell the FBI is supposed to destroy all NICS data. So this information shouldn’t even be attainable.
Furthermore I want to point out that this list is supposed to be secret for “national security” reasons. But apparently you can get the number of names and the number of people on that list who bought firearms. I wonder how much other information you can coax out of the government on their secret list. Given enough statistical information you can start to find out who is likely on that list.
Source: http://www.snowflakesinhell.com/2009/06/23/800-gun-buyers-on-terror-list/