I think you may have misunderstood. Mark Kirk of Illinois was the only Republican who wanted to prevent people on the FBI Terrorist Watchlist from acquiring weapons or explosives. The rest of them thought the status quo is just fine.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions" In the case of congressional-level legislation, things are so mired in politics and pork that you almost never get exactly what you ask for. You could declare martial law and that would be a wonderful way to keep weapons and explosives out of the hands of terrorists. But at much too high of a cost. With laws its particularly important to look at how a law is going to be exercised, exactly who it CAN be applied to (and not just "who we're intending on applying it to, this is a COMMON mistake), what oversight (if ANY?) there will be, and when (if EVER?) the law will expire. There are a few other major ones but these are the big three.
The reason I said "kneejerk reaction" earlier is because the rush to push through legislation to catch C, D, and J often casts an overly broad net that technically applies to B through L. When questioned on this, they almost universally say "well of course this law isn't meant to be applied to everyone, we trust the cops and the judges to only apply it to C/D/J even though technically they can apply it fully to B-L. Trust us." The problem with this approach is it is fundamentally flawed. Cops enforce the law, they are not supposed to interpret and selectively apply it. They expect the laws to be written accurately and concisely. Judges just make sure the process is fair, within the definition of the law, so if you're G, you're technically within B-L, and you're fair game. The only way to prevent abuse is to rule it out by writing a good law that carefully defines application to C, D, and J.
This is just one aspect of a good law / bad law. I mentioned oversight and expiration also, and these, if skipped in the drafting or done poorly/incompletely, can have just as damaging of effects.
Please don't support badly written laws just because they have good intentions. There are way too many examples of just how horribly wrong this can go. And in a country where power, politics, and money are driving forces, something that can be abused is virtually guaranteed TO be abused.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department
