Have we lost our collective minds in this nation? This whole idea of banning people on the
terrorism watch list from buying guns is beyond insane on so many levels.
Has anybody actually looked into what it takes to get on the
terrorism watch list or no-fly list (they are different). I did.
I found a Congressional Research Service paper on the matter dated from
April of last year. It turns out, it is
VERY secretive. In fact, there are no
publicly available guidelines for who ends up on the lists. Here is a quote from the CRS report:
“The precise guidelines and particular factors the
government relies on to place individuals on terrorist watchlists are not made
public. The criteria for placement on the No Fly list, as well as whether a
person is on the No Fly list, are considered “Sensitive Security Information”
(SSI) and have not been publicly released by the federal government.”
Here’s some more Orwellian stuff to consider from the
report. When figuring out whom to put on
the “no-fly” list, there are some standards that DHS follows. They get information from various methods and
agencies and compile the list. However, that
standard is fluid and can change on a whim.
Take a look:
“This standard was not mandated by statute, but was “adopted
by internal Executive Branch policy and practice.” In addition, a recent
district court case indicates that there is a “secret exception to the
reasonable suspicion standard,” but the “nature of the exception and the
reasons ... for nomination are claimed to be state secrets.””
So the executive branch can arbitrarily change the criteria
of who is included on the list.
Nice.
Now for the fun part and the real point of all of this. In the past two years, Hillary Clinton has
publicly compared the following groups to terrorists: The NRA, the GOP and anybody who disagrees
with her on the issue of abortion. I’m
not kidding on this. Do a Bing search (google
is less helpful in finding the exact references… go figure).
So in the opinion of the woman who might be the next head of
the executive branch of government, anybody who disagrees with her is on the
same level as terrorists. She will have
the ability to add any of them to the terror watch list and thereby, prevent
any of them from buying a gun and there is no redress.
Does this bother my non-gun owning friends? Is it OK to restrict the rights of Americans
based upon secret lists? Is it OK to
deny any right without some form of accountability or redress? This is scary stuff.
