Dec. 10 Cox News Service column by Tom Teepen: "Most Americans are perfectly capable of hanging tough against terrorism while debating the means. Too bad John Ashcroft isn't one of them."

Philadelphia Daily News editorial, Dec. 10: "In these troubled times, we have to be prepared to give up our freedom to bring knitting needles on an airplane, but law enforcement may not see records because it might make some gun nut in Wyoming nervous."

Dec. 10 San Francisco Chronicle editorial: "It's puzzling...that an attorney general who feels such a sense of urgency to round up 1,200 people-in sometimes legally dubious circumstances-seems so uncurious about how they may have been arming themselves."

Dec. 11 Newsday column by Marie Cocco: "He deprives hundreds of detainees of their liberty. But he will not deprive them of their guns...He pursues them for working at shopping-mall kiosks, but not for the possibility they hold a weapons cache."

It's not just editorialists and columnists who are upset. For instance, Los Gatos, Calif., police chief Larry Todd, a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police firearms committee, told the New York Times, "This is absurd and unconscionable. The decision has no rational basis in public safety."

Lawmakers are upset, too. "You're looking for new tools in every direction," Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) told Ashcroft when he appeared before the Senate on Dec. 7 to answer questions abou