CNN leads with a very misleading headline. Albeit, the article is surprising balanced – for a CNN article.
“When people on the government’s terrorist watch list have tried to buy guns or explosives in recent years, the government has let them the vast majority of the time.”
The essence of the article addresses the fact that 865 individuals on the Terrorist Watchlist have purchased firearms and explosives. I am curious what they define as explosives, I wager they’re probably “primers”.
I will give CNN credit for actually including the counter-point and quoting Chris Cox from the NRA regarding the matter.
“The integrity of the terror watch list is poor, as it mistakenly contains the names of many men and women, including some high-profile Americans, who have not violated the law,”
So what is at hand?
Senator Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey is proposing a law to grant the U.S. Attorney General (namely, the extremist anti-gunner Eric Holder) the right to deny the sale of a firearm to anyone on the “terrorist/no-fly list”.
These would be people who passed the background checks. But appear on the “watchlist”. Many in the gun community see this as providing the means for a de facto gun ban. The reason for these feelings are numerous. But one of the leading is the fact that said terrorist watch list does not have any checks and balances. People are never given the reason they were added, nor do they have any recourse to have their names removed from the list.
Such a proposition is even more frightful when we have documents being released from Homeland Security labeling those who are pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, have Ron Paul bumper sticker, etc as potential “right-wing extremists”. Or when training exams for our military label those who attend protests as “low level terrorism”. When such talk is no longer the rhetoric of the conspiracy theorists and threepers, but actually coming from our government itself, you’d be stupid NOT to be concerned.
Would it be fair to add people to a secret list, and all those added to said list would be executed. Perhaps starting with Senator Kennedy who was stopped at the airport for being on the no-fly list. (Oops, I probably just got added to the watch list and would lose my right to be armed under Lautenberg’s proposal.) Extreme? Perhaps, but doesn’t the taking of one’s means to defend themselves equate to a potential death sentence?
How dangerous is it when the government creates secret lists that take away citizens rights with no legal recourse. And when do those secret lists become akin to the ones in the Soviet Union – and people disappear.
To Senator Lautenberg…I say this…”You are more dangerous than any terrorists on our our list. They only seek to kill and destroy us. You are seeking to take away our freedoms and destroy who we are!”
PS – You are just reaffirming my belief that if New Jersey fell into the ocean – I wouldn’t miss it. I already HATE driving through N.J.
