Drugs are more dangerous than guns

A member of Daily Kos brought up a Real Time with Bill Maher moment I saw Friday night:

...Friday night on `Real Time with Bill Maher,' the topic of gun control came up.  Specifically, the fact that terrorists can come to this country and easily buy guns.  No waiting period.  No paper trail.  No problem.

GOP pundit and guest panelist David Frum, bristling with fresh hypocrisy, chastised Democrats on the issue.  He said it was fine if we wanted to talk about gun control in general (gee, thanks), but c'mon...you shouldn't link it to terrorism.  That would be cheap and tawdry and manipulative.  Beneath us, y'know...

Yes indeedy, Frum did in fact object to linking terrorism with gun control. (Again, I watched it happen.) I wonder how he felt about this:

"Cues from chatter" gathered around the world are raising concerns that terrorists might try to attack the domestic food and drug supply, particularly illegally imported prescription drugs, acting Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Lester M. Crawford says.

....Crawford said the possibility of such an attack was the most serious of his concerns about the increase in states and municipalities trying to import drugs from Canada to save money.

UPDATE: I've just transcribed the relevant parts of the Bill Maher show below the fold. Annotations are included. An interesting thing to point out is that this particular absurdity was in response to a strawman argument within Frum's own mind.

BILL MAHER: Now here's another issue, where I think the Democrats, again I'm worried that they're not going to stand up -- that means there's no voice for a lot of people in this country. Do you realize that in the Patriot Act, being on a terrorist watchlist does not, I repeat, not prohibit you from buying a gun? We can't have a lighter on a plane now, so if you have one of those headshop lighters that looks like a gun, it better be a real gun.
NATALIE MAINES: Well, first of all, they did background checks after 9/11 on 44 of the terrorists who were part of that -- who were on the list -- and 33 of them had bought several guns in the United States.
BM: Yeah!
NM: And on a Taliban website, they tell all their people, "Hey, go to America to buy your guns. They have all these gun shows and you can buy all these automatic weapons. It's awesome!"
DAVID FRUM: It's news to me that you can't do that and that's probably an easy thing to fix. [audience groaning] But the idea that you are worried about terrorism of mass destruction being executed with firearms is, I think...
BM: Excuse me, but if a terrorist got into one of our not-well-guarded chemical plants, and just shot up one of the tanks of deadly propane gas, or whatever it is, with an AK-47, yes it could be deadly. It could be very deadly.
DF: Japan has the world's strictest gun laws. They still have the Japanese Red Army.
BM: But they don't hate Japan like they hate us! [audience laughing]
DF: The Japanese had their own terrorists. Look, the thing, when terrorists do the terrible things that we are trying to prevent them from doing, the weapon of choice is not going to be firearms. The thing to worry about...
BM: We didn't think it was going to be planes either! Remember Condoleeza Rice? "Who could imagine? Who could imagine?" [audience applause]
NM: And the point is, not that they're going to do something with guns, but like [Bill's] saying, all the things that have been restricted. And, you know, when you go to buy a gun, even when they do this silly little background check, when you pass it, they just tear it up. Nobody knows that you were there and you got the gun. They keep a record of our phone and I'm sure they have lots of my conversations, and all of my little faults, but they wouldn't know if I have a closetful of guns. And they're buying them by the truckload and sending them over wherever!
DF: The first thing you said, I think, was the most true and revealing, which is, that this is about banning guns as an end in itself. And if you are opposed to guns, just be opposed to guns! Don't try to piggyback it onto a terrorist issue, which has got nothing to do with. Worry about nuclear materials!

...

BM: Let me ask [David] this: In his State of the Union address this year, when [Bush] was selling his Social Security plan, which I'm not against, he said, "Society has changed in ways the founders of Social Security could not have foreseen." Doesn't that logic apply to guns? Hasn't the world of guns changed in ways the Founding Fathers who wrote the Second Amendment could not have foreseen? [audience applause]
DF: And that's why there are extraordinary [unintelligible] of regulations on the purchase and use of firearms that date back to the 1930s. [audience groaning] These are not unregulated. All I'm saying is just, please, if you wanna talk about it, by all means talk about it, but don't piggyback it onto something else because the terrorism threat is not going to come about because of people popping away with Uzis.
BM: How do you know that?!
NM: Exactly!
DF: As you heard in that very impressive interview with Tom Friedman, terrorism is a political action that is engaged in, that aims at achieving spectacular results, to demoralize the United States, upset American society, it's Friedman's point exactly. If you wanna try your luck and encourage the Democratic part to go try their luck, which has not been very successful, on the gun issue, go ahead, but please don't piggyback it onto something else.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, let's talk about guns for just a second. Number one is, there's no reason for anybody to have assault weapons in our society. [audience applause] They should be banned. And if you want assault weapons, we've got a uniform and a pair of boots for you to wear...