Obama Suggests No-Fly List For Guns:
June 3, 2016 3:10 pmI don't think we should conflate the "No-Fly List" with a list of people who are Americans, but whom we are dubious about. If we think that citizens are a threat to the country ... we should prove it.
We’ve got people who we know have been on ISIL websites living here in the United States, U.S. citizens,” Obama said during a PBS NewsHour appearance, using an acronym for the Islamic State terror group. “And we’re allowed to put them on the no-fly list when it comes to airlines, but because of the National Rifle Association I cannot prohibit them from buying a gun.”
And we should charge them with violating the law.
And then we should arrest them based on actions which they have taken.
Lacking 'proof of ill-intent', we should leave them alone.
There has been a lot of internet traffic over the past few days saying, in effect:
"Geez, we don't allow these people to fly, but they can buy guns? What good is the 'No-Fly List' anyway?"The "No-Fly List" restricts the travel by air of certain 'suspicious persons'. Travel by airplane is not constitutionally protected.
No, Mister President. The National Rifle Association is not limiting your ability to "prohibit them from buying a gun". The purpose of the NRA is to remind YOU of the Constitutional rights of all citizens ... applicable even to those whom we distrust..
You "cannot prohibit them from buying a gun" because of the Constitution of the United States of America. May we remind you of the Second Amendment?
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety".
(Or something to the effect, exact wording of the quote is sometimes disputed.)
Here's the thing about that pesky "Constitution": America is a Nation of Laws.
The Constitution was NOT composed to affirm the opinions of 'The Masses"; it was composed to protect "unpopular" people. (As in: "Unpopular Speech", protected by the First Amendment.)
Some of the 'provisions are a little odd, but they are all .. ALL .. designed to protect the rights of the individual American against a Government which does not necessarily represent the needs and priorities of its ALL citizenry.
Unpopular speech, unpopular races, unpopular you-name-it. We protect it.
We Americans don't much like foreigners who consider us to be 'upstart colonials'; as a consequence, we tend to choose our own rights, privileges, etc. We went so far as to encode our civil rights in that most spectacularly odd document: The Constitution.
We protect it all, because at the time the Constitution was written, EVERYTHING we stood for was unpopular .. to the Rulers. But we protect it all .. and this is what makes American an exceptional nation in a world of nations often ruled by strong-men, bullies and murderers.
Today, we have a group of would-be " Rulers" who are a popular party of Americans thinking they should decide FOR US what rights we should enjoy .. and which we should not. They are often supported by fearful lemmings who gratefully follow the lead of their political Gods.
We don't have to do that. We can think for ourselves.
I don't think we should conflate the "No-Fly List" with a list of people who are Americans, but whom we are dubious about. If we think that individual citizens are a threat to the country ... we should prove it.
And we should charge them with violating the law.
And then we should arrest them based on actions which they have taken.
And THEN we can consider whether their Constitutional Rights should be abrogated.
When America chooses to prosecute individuals by infringing on their Constitutional Rights without applying The Law, but instead does so because of rumor and innuendo, then we change from being A Nation Of Laws, to A Nation Of Innuendo.
America is, today, a Nation of Laws.
When we lose that, we lose our souls.
3 comments:
Mr. Obama maintains that he doesn't want to take anyone's guns away. He sure has a funny way of showing it.
Mr. Obama has a funny way of everything he says and does.
Obama: "We’ve got people who we know have been on ISIL websites living here in the United States, U.S. citizens..."
Yeah, so?
I'll bet, a dollar to a donut-hole, that most of those Americans who visit ISIS/ISIL websites are not, in fact ISIS/ISIL sympathizers. Rather, they are concerned, patriotic American citizens who are learning for themselves what the Hell ISIS/ISIL is saying and doing, largely because they don't trust Obama's State Department to give them an honest assessment.
To draw an analogy: You can bet that the IT folks who run the Oregon Legislature's website can tell who's gone in to read the text of various statutes (I myself spend not-insignificant time on ORS Chapters 161 and 166 for obvious reasons: they contain the CHL and firearm laws). According to the President's logic, folks who read the laws should be detained and possibly arrested, because the only reason they might ever want to read the text of laws is to find a way to evade the consequences of breaking them.
IOW, guilty until proven innocent.
Want to know what threatens you or your nation before you go out? Too bad; looking up the source provides reasonable suspicion of criminal intent.
"Due process"? What's that?
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