Where King's Bill Would Have Failed

Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the American Muslim convert that shot two local soldiers outside of a Little Rock military recruiting station, was on a FBI watch list after all, not that it did any good:

The suspect arrested in the fatal shooting of one soldier and the critical injury of another at a Little Rock, Ark., Army recruiting booth today was under investigation by the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force since his return from Yemen, ABC News has learned.

...

Officers who searched the car found more than 100 rounds of ammunition, an SKS assault rifle, two pistols, and two military books.

The ammunition was loaded in magazines which were found in a vest, police sources say.

You can expect at least lip service for Peter King's H.R.2159: Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2009 to pick up steam in the wake of the Little Rock attack that killed soldier William Long and the killing of an infanticide specialist in a Wichita church the day before.

Denying terrorists the means by which to carry out their attacks is something we can all get behind on both sides, but I can't find anything in King's bill to suggest that Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad or Scott Roeder would have been effectively denied access to firearms even if King's proposed bill was already established law.

Roeder's Freemen fringe is known to be well-armed and not prone to having any respect for federal laws—indeed, the defining characteristic of this and similar groups is that they do not respect federal authority—and I rather doubt King's proposed law would be the one they decided to follow.

Likewise, Muhammad could easily obtain arms via other, non-legal means.

As it stands, I haven't seen law enforcement or media reports that established how either of these domestic terrorists obtained their firearm. That said, we do know that another law, however well-intentioned, would not have been the slightest impediment to these killers.