Democrats will try again to block terrorism suspects from buying guns

[TomCADem]

Source: MSN/Tribune

Senate Democrats will again try to ban gun purchases for terrorism suspects on the no-fly list, promising a renewed — if modest — political debate about gun violence in the aftermath of the Orlando shooting.

Even though gunman Omar Mateen was no longer on the watch list, the legislation from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., would give federal authorities the ability to block firearms sales to those suspected of terrorism.

Votes could come as soon as this week. But the bill was defeated on a largely party-line vote six months ago following the terrorist shooting in San Bernardino and is not expected to do much better this time. Republicans, who have the majority in the Senate, and gun rights advocates led by the National Rifle Association are mostly opposed to new restrictions.

“We have to think what kind of country and what kind of Senate we are going to be,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democrat, announcing the new effort Monday.


Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/democrats-will-try-again-to-block-terrorism-suspects-from-buying-guns/ar-AAgZYA4?ocid=spartanntp

[Travis_0004]

1. yeah, who cares about the Bill of rights?

Can we renew the patriot act while we are at it?

Forgive me for not being in favor of secret government watchlist.

If somebody is a threat, arrest them, or at the very least, force a judge to sign off on a firearm ban, but the process needs to be transparent, and the accused should get the right to defend himself.

[TomCADem]

2. What about expanded background checks? Any problem with that?

To think that at one time, even under Reagan, we were able to secure restrictions against the purchase of assault rifles, but now, even liberals are 2nd Amendment absolutists.

[TeddyR]

6. Opposition to this proposal has very little to do with the Second Amendment

You have expressed support for infringing someone's civil rights (setting aside whether you agree that gun ownership is a "civil right&quot based on a secret government list that is undoubtedly filled with errors, without any conviction, much less due process.

[Indydem]

37. Right there. +10000

People don't get it.

"Um sorry, we are suspending your 4th amendment rights because you are on a secret government list you didn't know you were on. But, now that you know you are on the list, you can appeal!"

[MosheFeingold]

62. Correct

This is a due process issue.

A right is a right, even the right to be stupid.

I am apparently the only person here that remembers Nixon's "enemy" list, or, better yet, Sen. McCarthy's "suspected commie" list (which I was on, which is a joke in and of itself).

And it's not like gun control hasn't been abused by the right in the past. Most of the gun laws were created to disarm undesireables like Jews, Italians, and Irish in the North and blacks in the South. They are written with loopholes so assholes like Trump can always get their guns (remember Trump has a concealed carry permit in NYC -- that's next to impossible to obtain without connections.)

[beevul]

61. Uh...Under reagan, there were no background checks at all, federally...

Uh...Under reagan, there were no background checks at all, federally, outside the NFA.

[iandhr]

3. According to Justice Warren Burger

"The Second Amendment has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word 'fraud,' on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

[Travis_0004]

4. YOu see to have completey dodged the question

Why not just lock up suspects in GITMO? Maybe this new proposal doesn't go far enough.

[TeddyR]

7. The Supreme Court

Disagreed in Heller. Setting that aside, what is the point of your post?

[iandhr]

8. The fact that not everyone agrees that the constitution guarantee the right of gun ownership...

... to an individual.


"A well regulated militia" People tend to skip that part.

[TeddyR]

11. The Dem party platform

Is that the 2d Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. "Well regulated" means well trained. There's a lot (a LOT) of scholarly articles on that point. Here's a good starting point - http://www.constitution.org/mil/embar2nd.htm. A very readable article from a Democrat.

[askeptic]

14. Not Found

for some reason, your link isn't working - gets a 404

[Gore1FL]

33. When does your militia train? nt

[greyl]

35. If the arms that existed when the 2nd was written were all there is, no problem.

It's easy for some to forget that little point.

Here's a your shitty link, fixed:
http://www.constitution.org/mil/embar2nd.htm

[Indydem]

38. Maybe you should brush up on military history.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_air_rifle

There were plenty of weapons of death available in 1787. Not all of them were single shot muskets. To keep coming back to that asinine argument is childish and shows your agenda.

Do you think the first amendment doesn't apply to the Internet because it didn't exist in 1787?

[greyl]

39. No, the problem is you or the NRA wouldn't settle for those.

The industry has new and improved weapons to sell.

[krispos42]

12. Why do governments need an amendment to form an army?

Governments have the inherent power to establish armed forces. Just like a thousand other things, armed forces and armed law officers are part and parcel of being a government.

[happyslug]

29. The actual constitution made the miltia federal.

Under the US Constitution the Militia is to be organised by Congress. In the radification process, the biggest attack on the then proposed Constitution was what would happen if Congress failed to organise the Militia. The defense was the Militia existed independent of any government for it was the people acting together and thus could never be abolished. This was NOT good enough for most people of the US so it was understood (via state ratification conventions) that a Bill of Rights wound be passed with the first Congress and the issue of the militia would be addressed.

Given that background the Bill of Rights were passed. The Second Amendment clearly was to address the issue of a Congressional failure to organise the Militia or any part of the Militia. This purpose is clear and no one disputes it.

The debate is does the Second reserves to the states the right to organise the militia (when the Federal Government does not) within that state's borders OR is the right to to bear arms reserves the right to form up the Militia to the people themselves Independent of the States and the Federal Government? You can NOT form up the Militia without weapons, thus access to weapons by whoever can form the Militia was clearly the intent of the Second Amendment.

Notice the Second Amendment does NOT prevent or interferes with how the Federal Government forms up the Militia (nor requires the Federal Government to do so). The Second Amendment is clearly a reserve of power clause to either the States or the people themselves.

As to the recent Supreme Court rulings, Scalia actually avoids discussing the Militia in his opinion but instead concentrated on the right to self defense, a topic not even mentioned either in the Second Amendment itself nor on the debates on ratification of the US Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Scalia wanted to say it was unconstitutional for states to forbid ownership of pistols, but by doing so Scalia left open the right to ban assault weapons. I think that is wrong, under the clear language of the Second Amendment, pistols can be banned for they are at best marginal militia weapons for it is the militia the Second Amendment was to protect not the right to self defense.

Just a comment why the Second Amendment exists, it is NOT to protect the right of the Federal Government to have an army but to protect the Militia.

By the way the US Constitution does BAN States from having "TROOPS" without Congressional permission, but permit the States to have militia. Thus the states do NOT have the inherent right to form any army, that right is reserved to the Federal Government alone.

[Crepuscular]

19. Do you mean

the same Warren Berger who was opposed to Gay rights and who concurred with the opinion that sodomy was "a crime against nature, of deeper malignity than rape"? That Warren Berger?

Or are we just arbitrarily picking and choosing those quotes that support our own individual crusades?

[Ikonoklast]

63. Other quotes from the keen judicial mind of that esteemed jurist...

"To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching."

-Warren E. Burger

[onehandle]

9. 'Even one unpurchased gun is too high a price to save one life.' - Wayne LaPierre

[CanadaexPat]

13. Thank you.

[6000eliot]

15. Yes, because all of that is EXACTLY THE SAME THING as keeping assault weapons

out of the hands of crazy people.

[Odin2005]

27. There is no such thing as an "assault weapon".

That is a made up term invented by anti-gun authoritarians who know jack shit about guns.

[itsrobert]

31. How about Murdering Tool?

Better?

[Gore1FL]

34. OK, lets use "big fucking guns that can kill a lot of people quickly" instead of "assault." nt

[yeoman6987]

41. We had a ban for 10 years that president Clinton signed the ABW

The assault weapons ban was signed and everyone was happy until oops...columbine happened 5 years later. How on earth did the ban not work and why nobody every questions that? I don't get it.

[Gore1FL]

44. It didn't go far enough

We need to well-regulate the militia by determining at what reasonable level it should be outfitted.

The ban on nukes and Surface to air missiles is going swimmingly.

[yeoman6987]

45. Didn't go far enough?

The guns at columbine were banned.

[Gore1FL]

46. Not long enough, apparently. they were still in circulation

Replacements were being made that were just as bad because of the way the law was written.

I'd rather pry bullets from cold dead hands than bullets from cold dead victims.

[MisterFred]

56. What's your point?

Columbine was done with pistols and shotguns, neither of which were affected by the Clinton-era assault weapons ban - so you wouldn't expect it to be able to stop that kind of attack. Duh.

Note also that Columbine required 3 people. With better weaponry available, Mateen didn't need collaborators.

[greyl]

36. Oh brother.

What Right-Wing Media Won't Tell You About Assault Weapons

Conservatives in media have adopted the false National Rifle Association claim that the term "assault weapon" was invented by proponents of assault weapons bans in order to arbitrarily single out certain firearms for further regulation. However, before the gun industry trade association attempted to rebrand assault weapons as "modern sporting rifles" in 2009 -- a change in terminology also adopted by the NRA -- the gun industry and firearm publications routinely used the term assault weapon to describe the very military-style semi-automatic rifles that would be covered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein's assault weapons ban.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/02/06/what-right-wing-media-wont-tell-you-about-assau/192553

[MisterFred]

51. I'm not sure you're getting the point.

It's about who gets to define crazy people (Homeland Security, using whatever criteria they want), and what the government can do to those it considers crazy - without any convictions, warrants, or oversights.

[6000eliot]

53. Who is suggesting such a thing? Have you heard of a slippery slope fallacy?

[MisterFred]

54. No slippery slope at all.

It's the next immediate step. People are advocating allowing the government to take away a constitutional right other people in the United States enjoy with absolutely zero due process.

As in: the DHS puts some dude on the terror watch list because his cousin has been browsing pro-ISIS twitter feeds. Zero judicial involvement. Now that dude can't legally buy guns.

That's a violation of the FIFTH amendment (not the second). If you care about the FIFTH amendment, you should be against that.

I'm saying this as someone who supports gun control including universal not-instant background checks and banning high-capacity magazines altogether.

There's no precedent argument here. I'm saying that the proposals being put forward by some Senators right now (to deny anyone on the terror watch list the right to buy guns) is wrong and against the way our law is supposed to work. Not that it might set a bad precedent. It is itself unconstitutional.

[6000eliot]

59. What. Ever.

[MisterFred]

60. *Shrug* You're free to ignore the fifth amendment.

Wouldn't be the first time we decided to do that in the U.S.

Just don't expect me to call it a good thing.

[karynnj]

21. Do you think that allowing people suspected of being or associating with terrorists

has anything to do with the right to bear arms in a well regulated militia?

Not to mention, it would be better to simply BAN all weapons that like the AK 15 are capable of shooting that many times in such a short time. What legitimate reason can you explain for anyone to have that kind of weapon.

That ANYONE could buy such a weapon is directly the fault of GWB and the Republicans not extending the ban. The Washington Post had a very interesting article that spoke of the fact that the Democrats DID raise the very issue of terrorists being able to buy these weapons with ease -- and the Republicans scoffed at the suggestion. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/06/13/clinton-calls-for-a-new-assault-weapons-ban-12-years-after-the-last-one-expired/

In September 2004, as the expiration date approached for the federal assault weapons ban, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) called on Congress to renew it. As a junior senator, he'd supported the measure; as a presidential candidate, he knew that the Republican majority in the Senate was going to let it die. There was little appetite for a fresh debate on gun rights, but for a few days, Kerry tried to have one, arguing that the ban could be saved if the president showed leadership.

"In the al-Qaeda manual on terror, they were telling people to go out and buy assault weapons, to come to America and buy assault weapons," Kerry said at a rally in Missouri. "Every law enforcement officer in America doesn't want us selling assault weapons in the streets of America. But George Bush, he says, 'Well, I'm for that.' "

Bush's campaign dismissed Kerry as an opportunist. "To infer that the president is helping terrorists is a clear example of a desperate candidate," campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said.

The 1994-2004 ban expired, and in 2008 and 2012, there was no similar campaign by Democrats to promote an assault weapons ban. But in interviews since the Orlando shootings, Hillary Clinton has called for the ban to return, and linked the easy availability of semiautomatic weapons to terrorism.

Later in the article, it is noted that the assault weapon ban was favored by 70% of the country then -- and was favored by just 45% when Obama, Clinton and others pushed it in 2015.

[Ikonoklast]

30. The FBI said the AWB didn't work and was mostly useless.

And an AR (not AK) 15 was not even used in this attack.

[yeoman6987]

42. Not to mention columbine happened during the ban

[Kingofalldems]

43. Is this a dupe? Cause you posted the same thing upthread.

[cstanleytech]

32. They are clearly using this to bring attention to the gun issue which has lain dormant

but this gives them to the ability to atleast raise peoples awareness to the problem once more even though they dont have a chance in hell of such a law withstanding a scotus challenge.

[JohninPA]

40. Exactly!

Replace "owning a firearm" with "Voting" and this board would boil over. I find it a bit amusing that the same people who want to restore voting rights to violent felons are screaming about taking the 2nd amendment rights from people who have not been convicted of anything.

[askeptic]

5. Until the No Fly List Is Fixed, It Shouldn’t Be Used to Restrict People’s Freedoms - ACLU

Last night, in response to last week’s tragic attack in San Bernardino, California, President Obama urged Congress to ensure that people on the No Fly List be prohibited from purchasing guns. Last week, Republicans in Congress defeated a proposal that would have done just that. "I think it’s very important to remember people have due process rights in this country, and we can’t have some government official just arbitrarily put them on a list," House Speaker Paul Ryan said.

There is no constitutional bar to reasonable regulation of guns, and the No Fly List could serve as one tool for it, but only with major reform. As we will argue to a federal district court in Oregon this Wednesday, the standards for inclusion on the No Fly List are unconstitutionally vague, and innocent people are blacklisted without a fair process to correct government error. Our lawsuit seeks a meaningful opportunity for our clients to challenge their placement on the No Fly List because it is so error-prone and the consequences for their lives have been devastating.

snip

There’s another important aspect to the government’s case at this stage. The government has emphasized that it is making predictive judgments that people like our clients — who have never been charged let alone convicted of a crime — might nevertheless pose a threat. That’s a perilous thing for it to do. As we’ve told the court based on evidence from experts, these kinds of predictions guarantee a high risk of error. If the government is going to predict that Americans pose a threat and blacklist them, that’s even more reason for the fundamental safeguards we seek.

We disagree with Speaker Ryan about many things. But he’s right that people in this country have due process rights. We want to see them respected.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/until-no-fly-list-fixed-it-shouldnt-be-used-restrict-peoples-freedoms

[MisterFred]

55. Yes and yes. Thank you, ACLU. nt

[penndragon69]

10. Don't worry....

The NRA and their repubLIEcon
enablers will kill it in a heart beat !

We cannot infringe on a terrorists right
to buy assault weapons, explosives
or body armor.

[Travis_0004]

28. Good

I believe in Due Process.

That may not be the reason the republicans kill this bill, bit at least the bill wont pass.

More secret government lists are not the answer

[humbled_opinion]

16. I don't like it when the

Democratic party gets infiltrated with a bunch of disaffected Libertarians, their views align more with the rightwing and they should stay there.

[askeptic]

17. Supporting the Constitution is not just for Libertarians

I don't know what makes you think that Democrats don't support the Constitution. And most Democrats (with some notable exceptions) don't support using un-Constitutional approaches to get their way.

[Odin2005]

26. I have never been a Libertarian, I hate Libertarians.

I'm a socialist. who is against creeping neocon authoritarianism.

[heaven05]

18. good luck democrats

[Lurks Often]

20. So much for due process

Or is everyone ok with some nameless government official adding you to the terror watch list based on your name or what you look like or your religion or just because they THINK you might be a bad person?

[christx30]

22. Maybe at some point in the investigation if it looks like someting is there,

a judge can sign off on revocation of 2nd amendment rights. Like a warrant. But that would easily tip off the accused that something is going on, and they are on a watchlist. They may alter their plans or disappear.

[Lurks Often]

23. No

If you want to remove rights then the person is entitled to due process and the right to defend themselves in front of a judge or jury.

Legal precedents applied to the 2nd Amendment can and WILL be used against the other rights we have. Why can't people recognize that?

[christx30]

24. I reconize it. I know due process is important,

no matter who the accused is.

And the reason that Mateen was able to buy a weapon after the FBI's investigation was that he hadn't be officially accused of a crime. He hadn't been tried, convicted, or sentenced. Everyone probably has some kind of investigation. The general theory is that everyone commits 3 crimes a day, probably without knowing it. If a prosecutor wanted to go after you for one of them, they could.
But to lose your rights, you have to be given due process.

[Odin2005]

25. I thought we Dems were against the No-Fly List as an attack on our civil liberties?

Oh, wait, that was when Dim Son was in office, it's OK when a Democrat does it.

[RussBLib]

47. even if this were to pass

anyone could still slip into a gun show and buy anything without a background check.

A long argument about a tiny tiny step, and the GOP can't even take that.

[Elmergantry]

50. There is a reason why even tiny steps

are opposed.

Same reason why "tiny steps" in making abortion more challenging are opposed.

Both sides know the end game of their opponent is a complete ban on abortion and guns. Therefore EVERYTHING is opposed to the hilt.


Not so hard to understand.

[rladdi]

48. The voters need to follow these bills closely and determine who votes NAY on them next week.

Then we need to target the NAY politicians to defeat. This is the only way America will grow strong again. The defeat of the GOP who is actually destroying the states and America.
For the Republicans its either support the NRA or American citizens. They have one and only one choice. Lets vote smart this November and flip the House and the Senate, make America strong again.

[MisterFred]

52. There are actual good reasons to vote NAY on this.

Unlike most gun control legislation.

[rladdi]

49. American voters demand a vote on banning the assault weapons next week in the Senate too. Then in

house. We need to target and defeat any Republican or Democrat that votes NAY next week. We need to elect real leaders for the Senate and House. We also need to kick out the old, senile politicians in office too. It is time they retire. McConnell, McCain. Graham, and so many more.

[forest444]

57. That we even still have to debate this just says it all doesn't it.

[ronaldd32]

58. It's about time

Proper gun control laws in this country have been overdue for far too long, at the expense of thousands of lives.