It's all smoke and mirrors. So long as Americans allow ourselves to
be convinced that we need to possess guns for our own protection,
there will be no effective legislation.
We Humans certainly are full of contradictions. We want to believe
that by owning guns we can defend our freedom. But if defending our
freedom is so important, why in God's Green Earth are so many of us
bent on defending the right for men to decide what women can do with
their bodies? Of course if women all have hand guns on the ready,
they could protect themselves somewhat better from unwanted sex by
simply shooting the balls off their aggressor.
But I'm wandering again. Time to shower and Sally Forth into the
World to save some elderly blind folk.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/9/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Obama's 'Suspected Terrorists' Gun Ban Makes for Great Sound Bite but
Terrible Policy
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/obamas_suspected_terrorists_gun_ban_make
s_for_great_20151208/
Posted on Dec 8, 2015
By Adam Johnson / AlterNet
YouTube
Sunday night, President Obama threw his weight behind a legislative effort
in Congress to prevent "suspected terrorists" from being able to purchase
guns. The law, born no doubt from Democratic frustration to move the needle
on gun control, has garnered widespread support from Democrats and is even
making some gains among Republicans, including a reluctant Chris Christie.
In short, it would use the current no-fly list as a proxy for "suspected
terrorists" who, by virtue of their potential terror-like properties, ought
not to have weapons. (This list is estimated to include roughly 47,000
people based on the latest figures, but the total number is impossible to
know since the list is secret. A larger "terror watch list" is estimated to
include upward of a million.)
Preventing jihadists from obtaining weapons, especially in the wake of the
San Bernardino mass shooting, is superficially a common-sense step in
preventing another such tragedy, while creating a mechanism to keep deadly
weapons out of the hands of those the government suspects may be plotting
terrorism within American borders. There's only one problem: the proposal
makes absolutely no sense.
First, there's the pesky matter of what exactly a suspected terrorist is,
an
axiom the president and pro-Democrat media outlets appear to have glossed
over entirely. In a tweet Monday, President Obama insisted, "If you're too
dangerous to board a plane, you're too dangerous to buy a gun." But "too
dangerous" according to whom?
For virtually the entirety of the Bush administration, opposition to the
no-fly list was a core tenet of liberals and civil libertarians in the
United States, and for good reason. The list is secret, arbitrary and
disproportionately affects Muslims and people of Arab descent. The
oversight
and due process is razor thin, and false positives - the most famous was
the
late Senator Ted Kennedy in 2004 - are notoriously common. If people want
to
appeal their position on the list they can do so to the Department of
Homeland Security, but they are not entitled to an in-person defense or the
right to call character witnesses. Put simply: the no-fly list is a civil
liberties nightmare and there's no reason to think the terror gun list
would
be any better. Who is and isn't a "suspected terrorist," according to the
text of the bill, is entirely at the whim of the Attorney General, who:
1. "...determines that the [buyer] is known (or appropriately suspected)"
to
have been involved in terrorism-related conduct "or providing material
support support or resources for terrorism," and
2. "...has a reasonable belief that the [buyer] may use a firearm in
connection with terrorism."
This is a dubious legal standard as Eugene Volokh of The Washington Post
lays out:
That's a very low bar - denial of a constitutional right based on suspicion
(albeit "appropriate") about a person's connections, and belief (albeit
"reasonable" belief) about a person's possible future actions. Indeed, most
of the time this would come into play only as to people for whom the
government doesn't have proof of terrorist activity. If the government had
proof, presumably the people would be prosecuted. (If the government has
proof but isn't prosecuting because it hopes that quietly watching them
would help catch more or bigger fish, then barring gun purchases would be a
bad idea, since that would alert the person to the government's plans.)
The no-fly list has always been based on a troubling assertion of pre-crime
by both the Bush and Obama administrations. The American Civil Liberties
Union, which has been fighting the no-fly list for over 14 years, is still
at a loss as to what the core logic of the list really is. False positives
and violation of due process aside, why do we have a "terror" purgatory
where someone is too dangerous to be trusted on a plane, yet not dangerous
enough to detain for a crime?
"At what point do we actually take action against them if they're under
what
we think of as passive surveillance?" Tim Sparapani, former senior
legislative counsel for the ACLU, asked The Washington Post. "If they're
too
dangerous to be put on a plane but not too dangerous for us to arrest them,
what exactly is this list about?"
What is it about? Democrats have stopped asking but the question never went
away.
One of the common responses to this objection is that lawmakers could
reform
the no-fly list itself; give it more oversight. This is the hope of the
ACLU, which have thus far taken no position in hopes such an eventuality is
possible. An ACLU spokesperson told Buzzfeed's Chris Geidner, "There is no
constitutional bar to reasonable regulation of guns, and the No Fly List
could serve as one tool for it, but only with major reform."
While the ACLU remains vague on what such reform would look like, it's
important to note that no concrete proposals to reform the no-fly list have
been offered by any of the law's major backers. Such reform remains in the
realm of wishful thinking, and in many ways, would render such a list moot.
Part of the appeal of the no-fly list is its low evidentiary bar and its
secrecy; take these things away and it's unclear whether lawmakers would
find such a list useful at all.
Another common objection is that gun ownership isn't a right and is thus
not
worth protecting. While it's reasonable, and quite common, to hold this
view, individual gun ownership is a right both Obama and the Supreme Court
insists is real and worth protecting. The ACLU is correct to note that
"reasonable regulation" of gun ownership is entirely routine and legal, but
the precedent remains nonetheless: are we comfortable tethering
constitutional rights to secret lists doled out by the Executive Branch?
Would we be comfortable doing so under a President Trump? While further
legislation would be necessary for such measures, the precedent at work
here
should cause pause among civil libertarians.
By accepting the core logic of a no-fly list -and inextricably linking it
to
public safety for the foreseeable future-liberals are accepting one of the
more pernicious and counterproductive legacies of the Bush era and
codifying
it into bipartisan consensus for generations. To those who believe secret,
due process-free lists that strip people of rights and privileges are a bad
thing, this is probably not worth the minor safety gains the bill may or
may
not actually provide.
The second objection is there's little evidence such gains would even be
manifested. The law is largely in response to the San Bernardino shootings
but we have no evidence the shooters, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, were
even on the no-fly list. Just like the flood of laws after the death of
Caylee Anthony that made not reporting a missing child a felony would have
done nothing to actually prevent her death (she wasn't missing, she was
dead), this law is in response to crime that the law itself would have done
nothing to prevent. This is the hallmark of knee-jerk legislation, which
might be useful election-year fodder against the Republicans, but does not
good policy make.
It's understandable why Obama would want to reach for this compromise. The
GOP has been militant and lockstep in its refusal to back even the most
common-sense gun control measures. In the wake of another horrific mass
shooting, activists and politicians-no doubt acting in earnest-are reaching
for something, anything, to move the needle in the direction of more gun
control. Since the legislative and ideological momentum is difficult to
budge, they have fashioned a GOP wedge issue that provides a false choice:
Which do you care about more, fighting ISIS or protecting the NRA? On its
face, it's a brilliant piece of agitprop-exposing hypocrisy at the heart of
Republican gun fetishists-but its core assumptions, that those on the list
are actually "terrorists" or that it would make a dent in 12,000 annual gun
deaths a year, doesn't stand up to the most cursory of reviews.
Democrats and gun safety advocates are right to be angry. They're right to
want to, in the words of the president, "do something." But this course
seems more poll-driven than policy-driven. Gun-control activists should
continue using the bully pulpit in Obama's final months and expanding their
ground game to push for more background checks, assault weapons bans and
other broadly popular measures instead of blowing the righteous, post-San
Bernardino outrage on token, ultimately pointless efforts.
http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
Obama's 'Suspected Terrorists' Gun Ban Makes for Great Sound Bite but
Terrible Policy
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/obamas_suspected_terrorists_gun_ban_make
s_for_great_20151208/
Posted on Dec 8, 2015
By Adam Johnson / AlterNet
YouTube
Sunday night, President Obama threw his weight behind a legislative effort
in Congress to prevent "suspected terrorists" from being able to purchase
guns. The law, born no doubt from Democratic frustration to move the needle
on gun control, has garnered widespread support from Democrats and is even
making some gains among Republicans, including a reluctant Chris Christie.
In short, it would use the current no-fly list as a proxy for "suspected
terrorists" who, by virtue of their potential terror-like properties, ought
not to have weapons. (This list is estimated to include roughly 47,000
people based on the latest figures, but the total number is impossible to
know since the list is secret. A larger "terror watch list" is estimated to
include upward of a million.)
Preventing jihadists from obtaining weapons, especially in the wake of the
San Bernardino mass shooting, is superficially a common-sense step in
preventing another such tragedy, while creating a mechanism to keep deadly
weapons out of the hands of those the government suspects may be plotting
terrorism within American borders. There's only one problem: the proposal
makes absolutely no sense.
First, there's the pesky matter of what exactly a suspected terrorist is,
an
axiom the president and pro-Democrat media outlets appear to have glossed
over entirely. In a tweet Monday, President Obama insisted, "If you're too
dangerous to board a plane, you're too dangerous to buy a gun." But "too
dangerous" according to whom?
For virtually the entirety of the Bush administration, opposition to the
no-fly list was a core tenet of liberals and civil libertarians in the
United States, and for good reason. The list is secret, arbitrary and
disproportionately affects Muslims and people of Arab descent. The
oversight
and due process is razor thin, and false positives - the most famous was
the
late Senator Ted Kennedy in 2004 - are notoriously common. If people want
to
appeal their position on the list they can do so to the Department of
Homeland Security, but they are not entitled to an in-person defense or the
right to call character witnesses. Put simply: the no-fly list is a civil
liberties nightmare and there's no reason to think the terror gun list
would
be any better. Who is and isn't a "suspected terrorist," according to the
text of the bill, is entirely at the whim of the Attorney General, who:
1. "...determines that the [buyer] is known (or appropriately suspected)"
to
have been involved in terrorism-related conduct "or providing material
support support or resources for terrorism," and
2. "...has a reasonable belief that the [buyer] may use a firearm in
connection with terrorism."
This is a dubious legal standard as Eugene Volokh of The Washington Post
lays out:
That's a very low bar - denial of a constitutional right based on suspicion
(albeit "appropriate") about a person's connections, and belief (albeit
"reasonable" belief) about a person's possible future actions. Indeed, most
of the time this would come into play only as to people for whom the
government doesn't have proof of terrorist activity. If the government had
proof, presumably the people would be prosecuted. (If the government has
proof but isn't prosecuting because it hopes that quietly watching them
would help catch more or bigger fish, then barring gun purchases would be a
bad idea, since that would alert the person to the government's plans.)
The no-fly list has always been based on a troubling assertion of pre-crime
by both the Bush and Obama administrations. The American Civil Liberties
Union, which has been fighting the no-fly list for over 14 years, is still
at a loss as to what the core logic of the list really is. False positives
and violation of due process aside, why do we have a "terror" purgatory
where someone is too dangerous to be trusted on a plane, yet not dangerous
enough to detain for a crime?
"At what point do we actually take action against them if they're under
what
we think of as passive surveillance?" Tim Sparapani, former senior
legislative counsel for the ACLU, asked The Washington Post. "If they're
too
dangerous to be put on a plane but not too dangerous for us to arrest them,
what exactly is this list about?"
What is it about? Democrats have stopped asking but the question never went
away.
One of the common responses to this objection is that lawmakers could
reform
the no-fly list itself; give it more oversight. This is the hope of the
ACLU, which have thus far taken no position in hopes such an eventuality is
possible. An ACLU spokesperson told Buzzfeed's Chris Geidner, "There is no
constitutional bar to reasonable regulation of guns, and the No Fly List
could serve as one tool for it, but only with major reform."
While the ACLU remains vague on what such reform would look like, it's
important to note that no concrete proposals to reform the no-fly list have
been offered by any of the law's major backers. Such reform remains in the
realm of wishful thinking, and in many ways, would render such a list moot.
Part of the appeal of the no-fly list is its low evidentiary bar and its
secrecy; take these things away and it's unclear whether lawmakers would
find such a list useful at all.
Another common objection is that gun ownership isn't a right and is thus
not
worth protecting. While it's reasonable, and quite common, to hold this
view, individual gun ownership is a right both Obama and the Supreme Court
insists is real and worth protecting. The ACLU is correct to note that
"reasonable regulation" of gun ownership is entirely routine and legal, but
the precedent remains nonetheless: are we comfortable tethering
constitutional rights to secret lists doled out by the Executive Branch?
Would we be comfortable doing so under a President Trump? While further
legislation would be necessary for such measures, the precedent at work
here
should cause pause among civil libertarians.
By accepting the core logic of a no-fly list -and inextricably linking it
to
public safety for the foreseeable future-liberals are accepting one of the
more pernicious and counterproductive legacies of the Bush era and
codifying
it into bipartisan consensus for generations. To those who believe secret,
due process-free lists that strip people of rights and privileges are a bad
thing, this is probably not worth the minor safety gains the bill may or
may
not actually provide.
The second objection is there's little evidence such gains would even be
manifested. The law is largely in response to the San Bernardino shootings
but we have no evidence the shooters, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, were
even on the no-fly list. Just like the flood of laws after the death of
Caylee Anthony that made not reporting a missing child a felony would have
done nothing to actually prevent her death (she wasn't missing, she was
dead), this law is in response to crime that the law itself would have done
nothing to prevent. This is the hallmark of knee-jerk legislation, which
might be useful election-year fodder against the Republicans, but does not
good policy make.
It's understandable why Obama would want to reach for this compromise. The
GOP has been militant and lockstep in its refusal to back even the most
common-sense gun control measures. In the wake of another horrific mass
shooting, activists and politicians-no doubt acting in earnest-are reaching
for something, anything, to move the needle in the direction of more gun
control. Since the legislative and ideological momentum is difficult to
budge, they have fashioned a GOP wedge issue that provides a false choice:
Which do you care about more, fighting ISIS or protecting the NRA? On its
face, it's a brilliant piece of agitprop-exposing hypocrisy at the heart of
Republican gun fetishists-but its core assumptions, that those on the list
are actually "terrorists" or that it would make a dent in 12,000 annual gun
deaths a year, doesn't stand up to the most cursory of reviews.
Democrats and gun safety advocates are right to be angry. They're right to
want to, in the words of the president, "do something." But this course
seems more poll-driven than policy-driven. Gun-control activists should
continue using the bully pulpit in Obama's final months and expanding their
ground game to push for more background checks, assault weapons bans and
other broadly popular measures instead of blowing the righteous, post-San
Bernardino outrage on token, ultimately pointless efforts.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/americas_reckless_war_against_evil_20151
209/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/americas_reckless_war_against_evil_20151
209/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/americas_reckless_war_against_evil_20151
209/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/renewables_are_raising_stop_signs_201512
09/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/renewables_are_raising_stop_signs_201512
09/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/renewables_are_raising_stop_signs_201512
09/
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_daily_shows_trevor_noah_and_hassa
n_minaj_donald_trump_isis_20151209/
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_daily_shows_trevor_noah_and_hassa
n_minaj_donald_trump_isis_20151209/
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_daily_shows_trevor_noah_and_hassa
n_minaj_donald_trump_isis_20151209/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/top_6_times_us_government_excluded_milli
ons_race_religion_20151209/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/top_6_times_us_government_excluded_milli
ons_race_religion_20151209/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/top_6_times_us_government_excluded_milli
ons_race_religion_20151209/ http://www.truthdig.com/
http://www.truthdig.com/
http://www.truthdig.com/about/http://www.truthdig.com/contact/http://www.tru
thdig.com/about/advertising/http://www.truthdig.com/user_agreement/http://ww
w.truthdig.com/privacy_policy/http://www.truthdig.com/about/comment_policy/
C 2015 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.
http://www.hopstudios.com/
http://support.truthdig.com/signup_page/subscribe
http://support.truthdig.com/signup_page/subscribe
http://www.facebook.com/truthdighttp://twitter.com/intent/follow?source=foll
owbutton&variant=1.0&screen_name=truthdighttps://plus.google.com/+truthdight
tp://www.linkedin.com/company/truthdighttp://truthdig.tumblr.com/http://www.
truthdig.com/connect
