"ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN ASHCROFT, TESTIFYING BEFORE CONGRESS, 12/6/01: It's my belief that the United States Congress specifically outlaws and bans the use of the NICS database and that's the use of approved purchase records, for weapons checks on possible terrorists or on anyone else.
DEBORAH AMOS: What the Attorney General did not tell Congress in December is revealed in this internal Justice Department memo, obtained by NOW. It turns out that Ashcroft's own Justice Department had just issued an opinion that supported the F.B.I's longtime practice of checking criminal suspects against the gun background check records.
And it said, "We see nothing in the NICS regulations that prohibits the FBI from deriving additional benefits from checking audit log records."
Ashcroft refused to follow his own Justice Department's interpretation of the law, and insisted he did not have the authority to change this law.
SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER (D-NY), 12/6/01: You are certainly allowed to use the system because these people don't have the right to have a gun.
ATTORNEY GENERAL ASHCROFT: The law is as the Congress wrote it and I intend to enforce the law as it has been written and signed by the President.
CHAIRMAN: We wrote it that way because we had to it was the only way we could pass it.
SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER: But if you don't run the checks, you're not going to know who should be denied.
ATTORNEY GENERAL ASHCROFT: There...I don't think.. We are ships passing in the night, or maybe I am a rowboat passing you as a ship. Whatever it is here.
SENATOR JACK REED, (D-RI): I think if the Attorney General felt that there was any confusion about authority, he could have come to us immediately, as he did on the U.S.A. Patriot Act. I mean, here's a law enforcement officer who recommending to the President very serious and very sober steps about detaining people in the United States but didn't ask to allow the FBI to look at lists that have been maintained of gun sales that may have revealed a connection with terrorists."
http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript143_full_print.html