A different perspective. My comments in [ ].
"Once upon a time, Democrats would sit in to press for civil rights. Today,
they sit in to take civil rights away. [How sad is our all-too-frequent hypocrisy, on both the left and right, on what rights and who is worth protecting. Apparently gun owners, black or white, deserve little according to the sitters. The other set of issues have to do with the fiasco called the no-fly list. For more on the list see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List]
How else to describe the goal of this week’s 24-hour sit-in by House
Democrats? They took to the floor Wednesday demanding a vote on gun control
legislation in the wake of last week’s terrorist attack at a gay nightclub in
Orlando.
Gun ownership is a right. Due process of law is a right. The government
needs to meet a very high threshold before denying citizens either one.
Rep. John Lewis led the protest, which devolved into screaming matches
early Thursday. The Georgia Democrat is an undisputed hero of the civil rights
movement. He marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and suffered a fractured skull
on “Bloody Sunday” on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. “It took us three
times to make it all the way from Selma to Montgomery,” Lewis told reporters
Thursday. “We have other bridges to cross.”
But the Democrats’ gun control efforts aren’t about justice. It’s a
campaign to build a bigger, stronger, less accountable police state in the name
of “safety” and “common sense.”
ADVERTISING
The Senate on Monday voted down four bills – two Democratic, two Republican
– to expand background checks and prevent anyone on the government’s dozen or
so terror watch lists from purchasing a gun. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of
California argued her bill would have prevented the Orlando shooter from buying
his weapons because he had been on the FBI’s list not once but twice.
Trouble is, Omar Mateen wasn’t on the list when he bought his guns. The FBI
dropped him in 2014 when it decided he was more of a wannabe than a real risk.
Unless Feinstein wants to pass legislation to prevent anyone who ever appeared
on a watch list from buying a gun, her bill wouldn’t have made a difference.
But the bigger problem is the federal watch lists are an opaque mess. By
some estimates, more than 1 million people appear on the lists. The government
supposedly uses a “reasonable suspicion” standard for adding possible terror
suspects. Because the lists are classified, however, official assurances about
their reliability are impossible to verify.
But the American Civil Liberties Union – not ordinarily an ally of the
National Rifle Association – describes the secret watch list system as
“error-prone and unreliable,” using “vague and overbroad criteria and secret
evidence” or sometimes no evidence at all.
If you happen to be on one of the lists by mistake, it’s next to impossible
to clear your name. A federal judge in 2014 ruled the government’s process for
hearing challenges “falls far short of satisfying the requirements of due
process” and is “wholly ineffective.”
Oh, and get this: you don’t have to be a suspected terrorist to end up on
the feds’ blacklist. The Guardian reports that the National Counterterrorism
Center “permits relatives, including children, of watch-listed persons to be
included.”
This is the system Democrats want to use to stop bad guys from buying guns?
Sen. Chris Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat who led a 15-hour filibuster
last week to shame Republicans into allowing an up-or-down vote on Feinstein’s
bill, said: “Republicans have decided to sell weapons to ISIS.”
No, Republicans have decided to make sure people are not denied the right
to keep and bear arms without due process of law.
So what would have stopped the Orlando terrorist attack? One Florida gun
shop owner could tell something wasn’tright with Mateen. He refused to sell the killer a gun and called the FBI. The FBI did nothing. [The F.B.I. denies this]
Maybe instead of sitting around and chanting “no bill, no break,” Democrats
could work with Republicans to give federal law enforcement the resources it
needs to follow up next time
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/ben-boychuk/article85572547.html#storylink=cpy
