Why Liberals Oppose a Gun Ban for People On Terror Watchlist
WashingtonsBlog.com
December 11, 2015
Everyone Agrees that We Need to Stop Mass Shootings … But This ISN’T the Way to Do It
Everyone agrees – other than ISIS and a handful of crazies – that we have to stop the epidemic of mass shootings.
President Obama plans to introduce – through executive action – a gun ban on those on no-fly lists. So does the governor of Connecticut.
Sound like a no-brainer … stopping terrorists from having guns?
But as Daily Beast points out, in an article called “My Fellow LIBERALS, DON’T Support Obama’s Terror Watch List Gun Ban“:
As Americans we understand well how important due process is. No one, for instance, should be thrown in jail just on the say-so of some government official who declares they deserve it. Such is the behavior of tyrants, the Founding Fathers understood, and so we enshrined in our Constitution the right to counsel, the right against being compelled to testify against oneself, the right to trial by jury, etc.All of these rights are checks to ensure the government can’t simply pluck innocent people out of their lives and strip them of their life, liberty, or property. Only after fairly testing the charges against them can the government punish people with such deprivation.
But none of these hurdles must be overcome for the government to put someone on a list, especially not a list like this, which is a watch list. It is a list of people that for whatever reason (a reason that no one outside the government knows) the government has decided deserve closer scrutiny of their actions.
Is the government right to be concerned about these people? Maybe yes, but maybe not, and there is no way for ordinary citizens to know. Which means there is also no way for ordinary citizens to know whether any of them, even people who in no way intend to commit acts of terrorism, are also on that list.
The Rest…HERE
