by Joseph P. Tartaro | Executive Editor
Some legislative proposals are zombies; they keep coming back. And a lot of them are related to gun control schemes.
Victims of No-Fly list inaccuracy, left to right, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), and singer Cat Stevens, as illustrated by The Boston Globe using Associated Press photos.
Adding the names of people on the government’s post 9-11 no-fly list, created by Homeland Security during the George W. Bush Administration, to the National Instant Check System list of prohibited persons is one example that has been resurrected in Congress recently.
My recollection is that it was first advanced years ago by the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ). Some people seem to think the idea makes sense. Among them, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who brought it back to life for a Senate vote in early December, and by Minority House Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who tried to railroad it through the House of Representatives.
Both failed and blamed the Republicans and the National Rifle Association (NRA) for their defeat.
But Republicans and gun owners are not the only opponents of the scheme, even though Democrats seem committed to it.
Many liberal, and usually anti-gun newspapers, are also opposed. So is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has been challenging the way the list has been managed in the courts. That’s not because they don’t like the idea of expanding the number of people who are barred from acquiring and owning firearms.
For example, on Dec. 8, Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby even took President Obama to task for supporting the idea.
“The bodies of the San Bernardino victims were still warm, and President Obama conceded that officials didn’t ‘know that much yet’ about the circumstances or motives of the killer,” Jacobi began. “But that didn’t stop him from exploiting the moment to call for more gun control. There was the usual shopworn pitch for “stronger background checks.” There was also a demand that anyone on the “no-fly” list be prohibited from buying guns.”
“But if people on the no-fly list and the even more comprehensive terrorist-screening watch list pose such an urgent threat to national security, why haven’t they been arrested?” Jacobi asked.
“If horrors like the San Bernardino massacre could have been prevented by incapacitating the individuals on the watchlists, surely it is sheer recklessness to do nothing until they try to board a plane or buy a gun,” Jacobi continued.
“Well, maybe — except that the San Bernardino butchers weren’t on any government watch list. Neither was the Colorado Springs gunman. Or the mass shooter at the Oregon community college. There are an estimated 47,000 people on the federal no-fly list — but Dylann Roof, the Charleston church killer, was never among them. Nor were Boston’s Tsarnaev brothers. Nor was Adam Lanza, who murdered 26 victims at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. As far as is known, no perpetrator of any mass shooting in the United States has turned out to be on the no-fly list,” Jacobi noted.
Then he cited the problem faced by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy who was on the no-fly list and denied a boarding pass at least five times because the alias “T. Kennedy” appeared on the no-fly list
“Others blocked by the no-fly list have ranged from Washington journalist Stephen Hayes to a Florida toddler to Georgia congressman John Lewis to singer Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens,” Jacobi continued. “Even agents of the Federal Air Marshal Service have been caught in the no-fly net.”
Then Jacobi got to the core of the problem with the no-fly and other government “suspect lists.”
“There is nothing transparent about the government’s formula for adding names to the list, and there is no due process for getting one’s name cleared. For years, the government wouldn’t even confirm that someone was on the list. Only after the ACLU prevailed in a federal lawsuit last June did that finally change,” he wrote.
The Los Angeles Times editorial board went even further than the Boston Globe columnist.
On Dec. 7, the LA Times editorial also opposed the concept of adding people on the no-fly list to the NICS database, even though it is normally a supporter of Obama, Feinstein and Pelosi.
“Ending gun violence is critically important, but so is protecting basic civil liberties,” The LA Times editorial argued.
Even more opaque than the no-fly list is the gargantuan Terrorist Screening Database. The government has conceded in the past that it “misidentified” tens of thousands of blameless individuals, yet it continues to add names at a staggering rate. In court filings in 2014, federal officials disclosed that more than 1.5 million names had been added to the terror watch list in the previous five years. Data from the National Counterterrorism Center indicate that of 680,000 names on the watch list in 2013, fully 40 percent were described as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.”
“With a little bad luck, anyone could find himself added to these terror watch lists run amok. To propose making rosters so sloppy the basis of draconian new limitations on a core constitutional right isn’t ‘common sense’ gun control, merely cynical grandstanding.”
The Globe and the LA Times are not the only liberal critics of the whole Obama-Feinstein-Pelosi scheme.
The Washington Post and even the New York Times also ran critical commentary. That’s not something the liberal media does when gun rights alone are at stake.
