If the government can revoke your right to access firearms simply because it has decided to place you on a secret, notoriously inaccurate list, it could presumably restrict your other rights in a similar manner. You could be forbidden from advocating for causes you believe in, or associating with like-minded activists; your right against intrusive, unreasonable searches could be suspended. And you would have no recourse: The government could simply declare that, as a name on a covert list, you are owed no due process at all.
What Congress, or the next president, should not do is forbid individuals on the FBI’s terrorist watch list from purchasing firearms.
President Barack Obama does not appear to be discomfited by this possibility. Indeed, he seems to have decided that tethering gun control to the watch list is a wise use of his remaining political capital. Last week, before the Pulse massacre, he made another appeal to ban gun sales to those on the watch list, which has gained viral traction in the wake of Sunday’s attack. “I got people who we know have been on ISIL websites, living here in the United States, U.S. citizens, and we’re allowed to put them on the no-fly list when it comes to airlines, but because of the National Rifle Association, I cannot prohibit those people from buying a gun,” the president said. “This is somebody who is a known ISIL sympathizer. And if he wants to walk in to a gun store or a gun show right now and buy as much—as many weapons and ammo as he can, nothing’s prohibiting him from doing that, even though the FBI knows who that person is.”This rhetoric may sound persuasive. But the deeper problem is that virtually anyone who wants to commit a mass shooting can easily obtain a gun designed for the battlefield. In the gun safety debate, the terror watch list is largely a distraction.
The last paragraph is incisive but whoa is what precedes it a function of wing nut constitutional “thought.” The newly minted individual right to bear arms is not the same fundamental law as the foundational doctrine of Free Expression. We have lots of constitutional rights that are regularly circumscribed by security dictates. The right to travel interstate is protected in the Constitution. The TLC can search your luggage anyways.
The federal government can and does ban handguns from planes. The Congress cannot ban Democrats from flying.
Fundamental problem with the argument:
1) anyone can be put on a secret due-process-free watch list
2) banning guns for people on watch lists is the start of a slippery slope.
The problem is not #2. The problem is #1. A democracy under a rule of law should never have secret, due-process-free watch lists. Get rid of them.
Also get rid of guns not used in hunting that are stored in local armories when not in use. (How’s that for radical? :rollseyes:) But that’s a separate issue.
“You could be forbidden from advocating for causes you believe in, or associating with like-minded activists; your right against intrusive, unreasonable searches could be suspended.”
This isn’t happening already? The whole point here is that the government can restrict your freedom of movement, but can’t restrict your right to own a firearm. That’s insanity.
I posted it because there’s at least a semblance of an argument there. I don’t happen to agree with it.
Sound reason to post it.