NRA to Congress: On Terrorist Watch List, OK to Buy Guns
June 20, 2009
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9 Responses to “NRA to Congress: On Terrorist Watch List, OK to Buy Guns”
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[...] And unless Congress can fight off the powerful gun lobby and second Amendment groups, … Read Full Post: NRA to Congress: On Terrorist Watch List, OK to Buy Guns Adding Related Info:Government Report Says U.S. Guns Fuel Mexican Drug Violence – Flathead [...]
Now the watchlist is like being convicted of a crime, with out a jury?
How about watching the persons on the watchlist, convict them of a crime and put them in jail!!
OK, let me give you a hypothetical:
Barack Obama isn’t President, George W. Bush is.
Eric Holder isn’t Attorney General, John Ashcroft is.
DHS isn’t putting out documents suggesting that anyone who doesn’t drive a Prius with an Obama sticker on it is a “right-wing extremist” with ties to neo-Nazi’s and white supremacists, they’re putting out warnings about radical leftists who support abortion, believe in global warming, and think nukes are bad.
Now lets assume that you would actually be willing to resist being marched out to the edge of a big ditch and turning your backs on the line of guys with machineguns…
Do you really want John Ashcroft to have the authority to decide who gets to buy a gun based on his unverifiable, secret criteria for who gets put on a terrorist watch list?
This is like Bonnie Erbe’s recent suggestion to ban “hate speech.” Who gets to define what’s hateful? Is calling Bush a liar hate speech?
Rights are not something to trifle with lightly and whether you like it or not gun ownership is a right. If the guy is too dangerous to buy a gun, why the Hell is he out walking around?
The “watchlist” is so full of holes that it absolutely is not sufficient grounds for denying Constitutional rights to otherwise qualified people. How is it due process to deny a right to a person without letting them know why that right is being denied or how they can appeal it? I feel like I’m at a meeting of the flat-earth society here.
Look, Sue. This is not a “loophole” in enforcement provisions. In the United States, we don’t go around denying people various fundamental individual rights because they are suspected of bad behavior or crimes.
We deny those right to them when they are convicted in a court of law.
What you are suggesting is very, very dangerous. You are suggesting that the federal government can and should deny rights to just anyone they want, as long as they can articulate grounds for suspicion. Don’t you suppose that could quickly morph into denying them their rights arbitrarily and by fiat?
This is simply not allowable in these United States.
What you are advocating is that we hope and trust that the government will benevolently protect us, and exchange for that likely dubious hope, we give up fundamental liberties. Perhaps in Nazi Germany or the former Soviet Union, but here … no thanks.
Innocent until proven guilty….ever hear those words?
There are plenty of examples of people being hassled because they, or someone with a similar name as them, were incorrectly listed in the “terrorist watch list”.
Even Senator Kennedy was stopped at the airport and told he couldn’t board his flight because his name was on the list.
The terrorist watch list is an extrajudicial infringement on our personal liberties under the guise of “protecting” us.
If they do not receive their weapons from us, they will attain them elsewhere. We can not control everything – and by tying is only going to create more chaos.
This so-called watchlist is authoritarian BS. Plenty of laws are out there now for arresting and convicting people who have committed crimes. Denying rights without due process sounds like Nazi Germany in 1939. Posing new anti-gun legislation under the guise of “terrorist” control and using this to play on people’s fears is reprehensible.