Making "The No Fly List" The "No Second Amendment For You!" List
There's sense and there's knee-jerk sense, and the headline of this post reflects the latter.
It's human nature to resort to knee jerk sense, and I bet most of us do it and/or do it more often than we know or admit.
About the subject of this post...the "no fly" list is the list of people thought to be too dangerous to board an airplane, because they might kill everyone on it for Allah (typically -- though there are apparently environmental nuts and other nuts and suspected violence-doers on it).
Now, if you ask, "Do you want people who seem like they might be terrorists to be able to get guns?" the answer seems obvious: "Well, duh...no."
Except...whoops...who's on the "no fly" list? 4-year-olds and members of Congress who, say, maybe have the same names as suspected terrorists.
How do you get off the no fly list?
Well, is there a god, and if so, are you close personal friends?
Otherwise, you're very likely shit out of luck.
When Congressman Tom McClintock found out he was on the list, here's how it went down, per Sac Bee's Christopher Cadelago:
Turns out that when he was in the state Senate a decade ago, McClintock said, he discovered he couldn't check into his flight."When I asked why, I was told I was on this government list," McClintock said, calling the whole experience "Kafkaesque."
"My first reaction was to ask, 'Why am I on that list?' 'We can't tell you that.' 'What are the criteria you use?' I asked. 'That's classified.' I said, 'How can I get off this list?' The answer was, 'You can't.' "
He said it ended up being a case of mistaken identity with an Irish Republican Army activist the "British government was mad at."
McClintock said he soon learned that a fellow state senator also had been placed on the list, as well as the late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy. McClintock said he at least had the state Senate sergeant-at-arms to work through to clear up the confusion - "something an ordinary American would not."
Still, he said it took months of working with officials and repeated petitions to the government to get his name removed.
"The farce of it all was that I was advised in the meantime just to fly under my middle name, which I did without incident," he added.
Our Constitution says we get certain rights -- not that we have to go through some kafkaesque process to try to get these rights.
And there is zero due process being afforded people here. They're put on this suspect list, with no way to get off. And then we tell them they can't buy a gun?
But wait -- pause a moment before you answer, even if you think guns should be completely banned from ownership by private citizens.
Because...if you take someone's Second Amendment right away from them -- sans any sort of trial or conviction -- what right do you take away next? (Because eroding or removing one right makes it that much easier to erode or just take away the next.)
Oh, and how many people in nasty custody battles or neighborhood spats will be reporting the spouse or the guy next door for supposed "terroristic language" or something like that?
So...right...not so fast on this rush to keep "suspected terrorists" from owning firearms.
Also -- of course -- anyone who thinks making guns illegal will stop terrorism is, plain and simple, kind of an idiot.
Guns are illegal in France.
That sure did wonders to stop that Charlie Hebdo massacre, huh?
I think the only way you will get the left to stop this nonsense is to directly tie it to a right they care about, like voting. If you can't own a gun, you can't vote. (felons, non citizens, insane) should be a no brainer to have it apply to the same people. Then see what they say about putting someone (a likely Democrat) on a no-fly list losing voting/gun rights.
Joe J at June 27, 2016 12:57 AM
It's OK as long as we take away someone else's Constitutional rights because someone, some where, sometime, for some reason (maybe), put them on some secret list. Hint to Democrats: Dean Wormer was parody, not a role model.
Wfjag at June 27, 2016 1:14 AM
And we hear that such lists are subject to meeting quotas:
http://bearingarms.com/bob-o/2016/06/24/fed-place-people-terror-watch-lists-meet-quotas/
I R A Darth Aggie at June 27, 2016 4:24 AM
How effective is such a list when the moment you complain you shouldn't be on it they tell you how to easily circumvent it?
Same to the gun grabbers who when someone uses an illegally purchased gun to commit a crime immediately want to take away other people's right to buy guns legally.
Ben at June 27, 2016 4:57 AM
Minor quibble: Our Constitution acknowledges we already have these rights and restricts the government from limiting them. It doesn't say we get them.
Conan the Grammarian at June 27, 2016 5:25 AM
Given that people only find out that they're on the no fly list when they attempt to check in for a flight and given that many people do not fly very often (or at all) the likelihood is that the number of people wrongly on the list is much higher than we think.
the other rob at June 27, 2016 5:26 AM
You're right, the other rob.
"the likelihood is that the number of people wrongly on the list is much higher than we think."
Amy Alkon at June 27, 2016 5:54 AM
And given that there is no judicial oversight to the list, anyone can be placed on it with no avenue of appeal. So, if you want to deny someone's Constitutionally protected rights, just put them on the list.
This proposal is equivalent to passing sentence without due process. Tyranny.
Conan the Grammarian at June 27, 2016 6:14 AM
Re France: You probably should have mentioned last year's incident of
130 killed, 352 injured at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris..
Ron at June 27, 2016 6:25 AM
An intelligent person would recognize that when the ACLU, the NRA, and the Huffington Post ALL say this is a BAD thing that maybe just maybe it's a BAD thing.
Politicians, not so much.
Bob in Texas at June 27, 2016 6:54 AM
Bob, so long as the politicians are deemed to be doing something, well, it doesn't matter if it get rubbished by the courts or doesn't pass at all.
And this is a get out the vote mechanism to rally the base. Oh, and to hit them up for donations.
Not to mention that politicians have been trying to abridge our rights since pretty much the beginning. The Alien and Sedition Act of 1798:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts
I R A Darth Aggie at June 27, 2016 9:14 AM
I hope this controversy will bring needed scrutiny to the no-fly list itself -- which ought not exist without it needing a criminal conviction to get onto it.
Even though flying is not a constitutional right per se, taking away that privilege IS punishment and therefore needs to require due process -- which includes a conviction and nothing less.
The TSA has no constitutional authority to exist, and it's time someone arrest them all and put them in prison. Where's a local cop or sheriff's deputy with balls when we need one?
jdgalt at June 27, 2016 9:17 AM
"...the "no fly" list is the list of people thought to be too dangerous to board an airplane, because they might kill everyone on it for Allah (typically -- though there are apparently environmental nuts and other nuts and suspected violence-doers on it)."
Let us not forget - should there be someone here to defend the Thousands Standiing Around - that this list exists because we know that searches do not work.
If they did, No One Would Be Forbidden To Fly.
Radwaste at June 27, 2016 10:12 AM
You people and your "Constitution". Pfft.
Apparently the people who REALLY need to be heavily armed are the Department of Education and the FDA and the Smithsonian...
Senator Dianne Feinstein got a concealed carry permit but doesn't want her constituents to have them. This is 'Animal Farm'. Orwell had these ... people ... figured out.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at June 27, 2016 10:40 AM
From the link:
"The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service spent $4.77 million purchasing shotguns, .308 caliber rifles, night vision goggles, propane cannons, liquid explosives, pyro supplies, buckshot, LP gas cannons, drones, remote controlled helicopters, thermal cameras, military waterproof thermal infrared scopes, and more."
Because you never know when you'll need to retire a terrorist corn moth. Retire, with extreme prejudice.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at June 27, 2016 11:38 AM
"Even though flying is not a constitutional right per se, taking away that privilege IS punishment and therefore needs to require due process -- which includes a conviction and nothing less."
People will say, "The Constitution doesn't guarantee you a right to fly". That's getting it exactly backwards. In the now-dead Ninth and Tenth Amendments, it states that all powers not explicitly allocated to the federal government are reserved to the states and/or the people. (The Fourteenth Amendment adds on to that by stating that the rights that are explicitly guaranteed cannot be abridged by lower-level governments.) The Constitution does not state that the federal government may determine who is and is not allowed to fly. So, if those Ninth and Tenth Amendments were still in effect, it would be up to the states and/or the airlines themselves to decide whether to strip-search everyone who wants to get on a plane.
(Well, there weren't any airplanes back then, one might say. But there were horses and carriages and feet, and the Constitution does not grant the federal government the power to restrict use of them for travel. Similarly, it is generally recognized that the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of the press extends to electronic communications, even though there isn't an actual printing press involved.)
I'll admit that there are risks that need to be mitigated. As we've seen in the recent past, abuse of airplanes can do great harm to innocent bystanders. However, it has been a law-enforcement trope for about as long as America has existed that it's "too hard" to enforce the law and protect the public within Constitutional bounds, and that in order to do their jobs, law enforcement needs a Constitutional mulligan. Problem is, unrestrained power leads to tyranny, every single time. So while we can debate about exactly where the boundaries ought to be, there do need to be boundaries.
Also: When I'm a delegate to the next Constitutional Convention, I'm going to propose an amendment that explicitly guarantees the right to travel, employ means of transportation, and relocate. I want to do this specifically to rub it in the noses of urbanist types who want to see the hoi-polloi confined to high-density, Soviet-style neighborhoods.
Cousin Dave at June 27, 2016 12:09 PM
Trey Gowdy asks very straightforward questions about this and gets the usual mealy mouthed non-answers.
Miguelitosd at June 27, 2016 4:15 PM
Oops.. my html apparently didn't work on last.. link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNDcd1Fe5lg
Miguelitosd at June 27, 2016 4:16 PM
It's not uncommon for public figure in their narcissism to imagine that, because of their celebrity, they're the only ones facing threats from armed stalkers.
Rosie O'Donnell has no problem with having armed bodyguards for her and her children while arguing that everyone else should rely only on the police for protection.
Charlie Rangel on gun-control senators being protected by armed guards, "I think we deserve–I think we need to be protected down here."
Conan the Grammarian at June 28, 2016 7:16 AM
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