Terror Watch List Ruling Can Help Expose Gun Prohibitionist Tyranny
by David Codrea
Ammoland.com
September 12, 2019
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?
