U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)-
“A federal judge ruled … that a federal government database that compiles people deemed to be ‘known or suspected terrorists’ violates the rights of American citizens who are on the watchlist, calling into question the constitutionality of a major tool the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security use for screening potential terrorism suspects,” The New York Times reports.
“Being on the watchlist can restrict people from traveling or entering the country, subject them to greater scrutiny at airports and by the police, and deny them government benefits and contracts.”
The CAIR affiliation behind the complaint acknowledged, the net cast is wide and the watchlist can do much more than that if the gun-grabbers have their way. Prohibiting people on such lists from buying a gun has been a longtime goal of citizen disarmament zealots like Mark Kelly and Gabby Giffords, who made big noise a few years back over a poll indicating “a majority of Nevadans would support a federal law prohibiting people on the FBI’s terrorist watch list or the no-fly list from buying firearm.”
The thing about polls is they’re only as good as the recipients’ understanding of what they entail, and that’s where a quote from Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” proves (once again) relevant:
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.”
“The government’s use of terrorism watchlists has grown enormously since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and over time, the practice — and the opaque standards and rationales by which people’s names are added to such databases — has come under harsh scrutiny by civil libertarians,” The Times article continues.
“Opaque” hardly seems strong enough. If Ted Kennedy, with all his connections, could find himself ‘misidentified,” imagine what you or I would go through if we found our names kicked out as a false positive from a secret list. And using the “terror watch list” to disarm Americans has been a goal for years, exemplified by Barack Obama spouting manipulative inanities like:
“Right now, people on the No-Fly list can walk into a store and buy a gun. That is insane. If you’re too dangerous to board a plane, you’re too dangerous, by definition, to buy a gun…And so I’m calling on Congress to close this loophole, now.”
The antis call any potential for evading an infringement a “loophole.” Why tamper with a successful tactic?
If being on that list is going to prevent you (but not criminals or real terrorists) from buying firearms, who thinks the next step won‘t be to confiscate the guns you already own? (That’s where registration lists, which the National Institute of Justice acknowledges are necessary for “universal background checks” to “work,” can come in so handy, especially when supplemented with so-called “red flag laws.”) And if you are one of those real terrorists and are dumb enough to fill out a Form 4473 and submit yourself to a NICS approval, what better way to be tipped off that you’ve been “made” than to be helpfully told the feds won’t allow your firearm transfer to proceed?
And then there are the arbitrary disqualifiers. I remember years back how one guy found himself on a list for the heinous crime of taking a giant, inflatable pink pig to political rallies to protest government waste! And the pressure is on to expand the disqualifiers even beyond the animal-shaped balloon owner menace. We have the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force to help further expand the dragnet by circulating flyers asking gun dealers and ranges to be on the lookout for such deadly threat giveaways as shaving beards, paying in cash, or traveling an “illogical” distance to a gun-related event. Seriously, for those of you who don’t remember it, I’m not making this up. See for yourself.
Naturally, if common and benign behaviors are cause for suspicion, how much more of an indictment of guilt would actual membership in a domestic terrorist organization be? That’s what the San Francisco Board of Supervisors resolved NRA to be, and as is to be expected with all “progressive” ideas, the charge is hardly original. Remember 10 years ago, when “cartoonist” Ted Rall ranted of peaceful open carry demonstrators:
“These town hall terrorists could be declared enemy combatants and bundled off to Bagram with the stroke of a pen. If ever there were a reason for suspending civil rights, this is it.”
So good job, NRA, for suing the city over this. Longtime readers know I don’t shy from taking Fairfax to task, often caustically, when I think they’re being inexcusably wrong-headed, so it’s important to encourage good behavior when they deserve an “Attaboy.”
In the meantime, it’s interesting to note how far the American psyche has been perverted, as a recent Rasmussen Reports poll shows us:
“[N]early one-out-of-three Likely Democratic Voters (32%) favor declaring the gun rights group a terrorist organization in the community where they live. Fourteen percent (14%) of Republicans and 20% of voters not affiliated with either major party agree. Twenty-eight percent (28%) of Democrats say Americans should be prohibited by law from belonging to pro-gun rights organizations like the NRA, a view shared by 15% of Republicans and 10% of unaffiliateds.”
I’ll give anyone thinking of disarming Americans over this the same warning I gave Rall, one that prompted the strategically-renamed National Coalition to Ban Handguns to lie about what I was responding to when I wrote:
Careful, Mr. Rall. You’re talking about testing the ultimate last-resort purpose behind the Second Amendment. Some of us armed Americans take our Bill of Rights seriously and will not go gentle into that good night, bundled or by ourselves. You and your fellow travelers are playing a most dangerous game.
Let’s hope the watchlist ruling and the NRA lawsuit move us a step or two back from that precipice, but don’t forget the undeniable truth that is now out in the open: The antis not only want your guns, they want you treated like terrorists, that is, imprisoned without rights and/or killed. That’s not hyperbole. The words are theirs. And those in government want to make it official.
That’s what useful idiot cud-chewing Moms, parroting buzzwords like “commonsense gun safety laws,” are enabling. Whether they’re too blinded, biased and stupid to realize it or not…
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
Note the key language in the decision and what is missing: “Being on the watchlist can restrict people from traveling or entering the country, subject them to greater scrutiny at airports and by the police, and deny them government benefits and contracts.” WITHOUT DUE PROCESS. When I talk about the progressive new left’s effort over many years to create a Denunciation Nation this is exactly what I am talking about. Blind, false allegations can evade the rules of evidence, neuter cross examination and revoke the protections built in to an adversarial legal system designed to give each party and equal… Read more »
Well the Boston bomber managed to go home and come back, and the Russian’s warned the Feds.
@nrringlee, when you say without due process, do you mean something like kicking a persons door down at 2am and shooting them because someone said they might be a threat and the authorities need to go take their guns? That kind of no due process? You have it right nrringlee, the camels nose is under the tent. Once there is a method of taking due process away from anyone, it’s only a matter of time before they figure out a way to take it away from everyone.
Just how does one come to be on the s#1t/watch list? Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Maybe this is the federal government’s version of red flag laws? With world history being what it is and people and governments ability to ignore it, one might be of a mind to think that Hitler’s Germany during the mid to late 1930’s is about to reinvent itself. Hitler registered guns “for a kinder, gentler nation” and the world lived happily ever after minus 130,000,000 civilians. He said he wanted breathing room for his people. Loosing 1 out of every 4 people… Read more »
It wasn’t Hitler that had registered the guns. The Weimer Republic did under the pretense to keep them out of the wrong hands, which turned out to be the Nazi government.
Great column.
This pull quote from the Washington Post says it all:
“An individual’s placement into the [watch list] does not require any evidence that the person engaged in criminal activity, committed a crime, or will commit a crime in the future,” the judge wrote, “and individuals who have been acquitted of a terrorism-related crime may still be listed.”
Analogous to Red-Flag laws.
Denunciation Nation. Turn in your neighbors to save yourself.
Back when Glenn Beck was still on Fox News he had this older German woman on who was in the Nazi youth program for girls. She talks about who they were being brainwashed to turn their own parents and family in. Public Ed. in the USA is doing likewise.
why you should NEVER surrender your children to the government operatives who function as school “staff” in the gummit skewlz. Not only will they not learn much, they will have their minds and hearts filled with exactly this sort of perverted thinking. “”Never put them in, and if they ARE in already, get them out.
@Tio, Good observations. We need to recapture local school boards. But first, grandparents have a unique position from which to teach children to regurgitate back on tests what the teacher/bureaucrat wants to hear; then forget it; and don’t let on!
Little old, harmless grandparents have, in their hands, the ability to unravel all the evil that the Bill Ayers(s) crowd have wrought.
With the creation of Homeland Security, all the work and BS the FBI does became mute. If the FBI has to shut down their Terrorist Watch List, then all that is needed is for them to turn over their list to Homeland Security. Homeland Security can do anything they want to anyone, including life-long, born in America citizens without a warrant, and Habeus Corpus does not apply which means you can be held indefinitely without a phone call or access to an attorney. Sometimes, we focus on the secondary problem while the main problem lies dormant waiting in the wings… Read more »
@JPM, what you allege can not be true because a statute can not negate our Constitutional Civil Rights. See Marbury v Madisen.
Bill, it’s not an allegation, it’s a fact. Please don’t tell me you actually believe that the Federal Government complies with and always follows the law, I know you are not that naive. Constitutional rights (including the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments) have been violated regularly by Federal agents and agencies (FBI, BATFE, etc.) as exampled at Ruby Ridge, Waco and the Fast and Furious fiasco) and NO ONE of them has ever paid for or been punished for those actions. I have personally known of two arrests by Homeland Security in El Paso where the individuals simply… Read more »
@JPM, The word in moot, not mute. Next, it is your allegation until you can prove it, nor have you. Your statement: “… Homeland Security can do anything they want to anyone, including life-long, born in America citizens without a warrant, and Habeus Corpus does not apply which means you can be held indefinitely without a phone call or access to an attorney.” is complete nonsense because of an 1804 ruling styled Marbury v. Madison, which nearly every reader, here, is familiar with. Nor has habeus been suspended. I believe that if one of the governments or their agents violate… Read more »
@JPM, You write, “I have personally known of two arrests by Homeland Security in El Paso where the individuals simply vanished. Their families (Mexican naturalized – legal- America citizens) filed missing persons reports were told that their sons were being “detained” by Homeland Security and they could not have contact with them and could not have an attorney, as it was a matter of “National Security” which had priority.” You have described a common situation that has been going on for decades. Families (who might be legally here) of illegal aliens, who get arrested by ICE (formerly known as Immigaration)… Read more »
@USA, “They” are using force of arms, and that does not make the Constitutionally offensive statute into “law.” I know that you know that. Almost everyone, here, knows that. If not, Marbury v. Madison is instructive.
@USA, When? First, DJT is quietly repopulating the federal judiciary with judges that believe in the Consititution … all of the Constitution. If he gets four more years he will drain even more of the corrupt, libtard judicial swamp, to include: Ginsburg and Bryer! Then, maybe.
WB, the “Patriot” Act does exactly what JPM states.
Knowing when and how to take away personal freedoms makes all the difference in the world. Had it not been for the 9-11 attacks, I doubt we would not have been so easilly duped into giving up a little privacy to feel more secure. Now on the anniversary of “Some people who did something”, who actually masterminded the series of events that made Americans give up their freedoms so easily?
Whether they’re too blinded, biased and stupid to realize it or not…
or too well paid.
Thinking in particular of two females……. the Watts,……… and the Gab……
Wow, what state do you live in?
A few years back while watching Special Report journalist Steve Hayes disclosed that he too was on the no-fly list, and also for no apparent reason. He did get his name removed, but Brett Baier had to question Jeh Johnson about it during an interview for it to happen.
Time to flee. Vote with your feet. If you live in a blue utopia you are outnumbered by the mindless drones who actually think this kind of oppression is a good thing.
@ring, Yes. At least flee the city. Enforced utopia will come to the cities, first.
Progressive hostility to the Bill of Rights, nor just the 2nd Amendment has long been obvious. We need to be supervised for our own good and if the Bill of Rights gets in the wat, the BoR has to go.
If the New York Times is complaining about it, then it must be something that I would think is (at least) okay, and more likely WONDERFUL. What we need is a list of unregistered propaganda outlets (like the New York Times and WaPo).
Please let’s stop the retoric of violence in arguments. It feeds the emotionalism the anti-2A folks use to pursue anti-gun activities!
Have you ever bothered to read any of the writings written by the founders of our Republic?
Have you read The Federalist Papers?
The bottom line is that the nomenclature used by David in this article is mild by comparison.
Bill: The most vicious things I’ve seen were the posts on the Washington Post about Sarah Palin’s family. Flat-out disgusting.
And BTW its rhetoric.
The Founders would be shooting by now.
@Bill, Can you get the anti-Second Amendment civil rights crowd to stop their emotional rhetoric, also? Have you asked them to stop?
I don’t think that our unilateral stopping will do anything more than encourage them. What are you going to ask us to stop doing next writing to our Congresspersons, the pres., stop voting maybe.