More than 12,000 people in America were killed by guns this year.
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“Criminals are not necessarily going to go through the legal means to obtain firearms for illegal purposes”, Leblanc said. Or maybe just to suspected terrorists.
The American Civil Liberties Union is taking no position on legislation that would bar people from buying guns if they are on the federal government’s no-fly list – a list that the ACLU has spent the past five years arguing is unconstitutional. Or maybe to all of these people.
Calling the San Bernardino shooting an “an act of terrorism”, President Obama asked Congress to enact a law preventing any individual on a no-fly list from buying a weapon. We need to see that there are loopholes where attackers are slipping through, and we need to work to close those loopholes. Many GOP candidates are asking for increases in surveillance after the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, but believe the no-fly list is an unreliable way to monitor suspects. Obama explained during his oval office speech that if you’re too unsafe to board a plane, you’re too risky to buy a gun. He was on a no-fly list in 2004. The Michigan Senate and House will likely vote on these bills soon. The no-fly list has also been used to deny boarding passes to people who only share a name with a suspected terrorist. There is no objective test. You can be put on the list if there is a “reasonable suspicion” that you are a threat; if you post something on Facebook or Twitter that raises a suspicion; if someone reports you as a potential threat; if you know someone who might be a potential threat; or if you belong to a category of people determined to be potential threats.
Sadly, I’m hardly the only journalist to have ended up on a watch list that doubles as a corrupt President’s enemies list. In 2004, a clerical error – an Federal Bureau of Investigation agent checked the wrong box on a form – got Rahinah Ibrahim, a Malaysian with a valid student visa who was studying at Stanford, banned from USA flights. “There’s no simple correspondence between the number of firearms in private hands and the amount of gun crime, and I often find it somewhat odd that there seems to be a perception that things are worse than ever when, in reality, things are really better than they’ve been for decades”. According to Handeyside, the lack of in-person hearings for those on the watch list violates the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which promises due process. Dianne Feinstein said, “Even though the watch list is much larger, the percentage of the list that is comprised of Americans is very small”. 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. They get extra scrutiny at airports, but can come and go as they please, making the president’s pitch even more nonsensical. It ruled that the government must supply adequate notice about its reasons for placing people on the no-fly list, so they could contest the decision.
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As for background checks, applications for sale or transfer must be made with a licensed California gun dealer before the sale is completed. Matches are passed to the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, which may then investigate and block the purchase if it is illegal. Cleaning up the list and setting up a definitive appeals process can be done in tandem with blocking those on the list from purchasing guns, he said.
