There has been a lot of talk, from President Obama, Hillary Clinton and virtually all the Dems in Congress, about “closing the terror gap” and denying people who find themselves on the double-secret government No Fly List their Constitutionally protected rights. The rhetoric has been that the listees (people like the late Senator Ted Kennedy and 72 Homeland Security employees) who present a clear and present danger need to lose their Second Amendment rights. Now that we’ve actually had an opportunity to look at Senator Dianne Feinstein’s proposed legislation, their proposed gun buy ban isn’t actually connected to that No Fly List at all . . .
From The Federalist:
It turns out that the gun sales ban is not tied to the no-fly list, as falsely stated by the president and Clinton and numerous other people, including journalists who have baked this false assumption into their writing. But neither is it directly tied to the terrorist watch list.
Instead, the relevant statutory text links the gun sales ban to individuals who are ”known (or appropriately suspected) to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism, or providing material support thereof.” That language is cribbed from Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-6, which is what created the terrorist watch list. Thus, the bill gives the U.S. attorney general the discretion to decide whether a person meeting the terrorist watch list criteria should be prevented from purchasing a firearm.
In other words, the proposed legislation doesn’t merge the No Fly List to the NICS check process. Nor does it tie the less strictly policed “terrorist watchlist” to the NICS check system. Instead, it allows the Attorney General to create her own special list of people she deems to be “known (or appropriately suspected) to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism, or providing material support thereof” and deny them access to their Constitutional rights.
So it’s even worse than we thought. There’s zero due process involved in putting someone’s name on the list of scary individuals the AG keeps in her desk drawer. There’s no way to know if you’re on it, and no mechanism to get yourself removed once you find out. In short, it’s the holy grail of gun control: an arbitrary, secret government list where they can designate anyone at any time for gun rights removal.
With the New York Times and other media outlets publicly demanding that we start confiscating firearms (not to mention documented government abuses like the IRS targeting scandal), it’s extremely difficult to take the Democrats at their word that the list will be used only for dyed-in-the-wool actual terrorist suspects and not for yanking the gun rights of people the administration doesn’t like. Or as a precursor to confiscation. Who are you voting for next year?