The Gun Lobby’s Long Shadow

[groovedaddy]

While the rest of the nation comes to grips with fresh concerns about terrorism, domestic and foreign, Congress is wrapped up in the peculiar obsessions of the gun lobby — most of which are certain to make Americans less safe in their homes and on the streets.

Congress, for example, is cowering before the gun lobby insistence that even terrorist suspects who are placed on the “no-fly list” must not be denied the right to buy and bear arms. Suspects on that list purchased more than 1,100 weapons in the last six years, but Congress has never summoned the gumption to stop this trade in the name of public safety and political sanity.

Legislation to close this glaring threat continues to languish with little promise of enactment because a bipartisan mass of lawmakers fear retribution by the gun lobby’s campaign machine. Firsthand pleas this week from New York City’s mayor and police commissioner — testifying after the attempted Times Square bombing attributed to a suspect who was also carrying a legally obtained gun — showed no sign of budging a timorous Congress.

It is a sign of the gun lobby’s growing confidence that if feels free to keep up the pressure, public and private, after the near-disaster in New York. Normally, the lobby goes quiet for a decent interval after a particularly heinous crime occurs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/opinion/07fri1.html?th&emc=th

[fascisthunter]

1. thank you for posting this

[X_Digger]

2. Ahh, the NYT..

.. ever the NRA's best friend when it comes to stirring up votes for pro-RKBA candidates.

[onehandle]

9. Ahh, the NRA..

.. ever the GOP's best friend when it comes to denying a Democratic district a vote in Congress.

[X_Digger]

10. Constitutional questions aside..

Where's the bill to grant a seat now?

*crickets*

[jazzhound]

23. Ahhhh.......the onehandles of the Democratic Party ----- pushing votes

to the GOP by virtue of the fact that they can't put their party before their egos.

[Kolesar]

51. The NRA's campaign commercials were an anti-Obama hate fest

They don't give a shit about the safety of Americans. They just want to sell weapons.

[Taitertots]

39. The Democrats are doing it to themselves

By refusing to listen to the will of the people. The NRA didn't make those Democrats take up unpopular positions.

[Statistical]

3. Its called due process read about it.

People on no fly list (over 1 million Americans) have been given no due process and no method to challenge that secret list.

We don't deny rights without due process. It is a cornerstone of our Constitution.

[Kolesar]

5. Apparently, *somebody* denied rights to those on the no-fly list

Somebody acting with the authority of government.

[Statistical]

7. No they didn't.

You have no right to board a private commercial airline.
You have a right to keep and bear arms.

Some people WANT to allow the govt to deny rights based on secret govt lists without due process however that hasn't and shouldn't happen.

The idea the govt with no oversight can put you on a secret list and deny you Constitutionally protected rights should scare anyone.
That your rights can be stripped without being informed of the charges against you, without a method to appeal, without even a method to find out if you are on the no-fly list.

The concept is most certainly not progressive.

[RaleighNCDUer]

20. I thought you supported the constitution.

Amendment IX The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed by deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The right to travel without government hindrance is one of those un-enumerated rights.

The 'no fly' lists are not made up by the private commercial airlines. They are created by the government. They are blatantly unconstitutional as they now stand, in that they are secret and uncontestable. They were, in fact, created not to catch terrorists but to harass liberals, as is clearly attested by the number of liberal celebrities who have been caught up by it.

However, should the list be trimmed to rational proportions, to people who are clearly potentially dangerous, such as to those who have had recent, knowing association with known terrorist or criminal organizations, then there is no reason why someone considered to be an imminent potential threat should be able to buy guns. The government has in its mandate the requirement to ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the general welfare. In fulfilling that mandate, the government already restricts the sale of some weaponry, puts limits on certain forms of free speech, and restricts international travel. Keeping dangerous people off airplanes would fall into that area of restriction - as would forbidding sales of weapons to them. This would, of course, fall into specific, court regulated guidelines, and the 'no-fly' list (and the no-gun sales list) would consist of a vanishingly few people, no more than a few thousand at most, who are already under the government's eye in anti-terrorism or criminal investigations. And even then, the vast majority who are on the list would know they are, and would be able to contest it in court.

For instance, Dr Tiller's murderer was clearly associated with known terrorists, and was known to be sympathetic to them. He legally purchased the weapon with which he committed his crime. At the very least, a flag should have gone up on that.

The no-fly list is an abomination as it stands - and you are just plain wrong in suggesting that the government has a right to have a million people on it, just because the constitution doesn't specify that it can't. But all rights have co-committent responsibilities, and all rights have limits, otherwise they are not rights but license.

[Statistical]

25. I am 100% against Bush stupid TERRA lists.

I was just pointing out you have no guaranteed right to use a commercial airline. With the fact that the courts have ruled just about everything under the sun is "interstate commerce" I have no doubts they would find the same here. So I would support a Constitutional challenge on TERRA list but I think it likely would fail.

That being said even if it is found Constitutional isn't a reason to keep it. It is possible for a law to we stupid, punitive, fascist, and worthless even if the courts find it Constitutional.

[Callisto32]

48. BUT, this assumes the government has the power to tell you who you can let on your private plane.

This is not something I am willing to accept.

[groovedaddy]

13. "We don't deny rights without due process." I would change that "don't" to "shouldn't". Bush did

it frequently. Unfortunately, I think it's still happening.

[Statistical]

14. Agreed. Still progressives shoudn't be cheering for denying even MORE rights without due process.

We should move completely back towards the rule of law not further down the "24" make shit up as we go along policy.

[groovedaddy]

18. I lobbied heavily against the so-called patriot act and homeland security bill for exactly those

reasons. I see no reason to stop now.

[jody]

4. The opinion piece cited is grossly ignorant. A major issue is whether an appointed official should

have unilateral authority to prevent any law-abiding citizen from purchasing a firearm for lawful purposes.

See S. 1317 http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-1317

[DonP]

6. Nice to see someone standing up for the Bush Terrah list - congratulations!

You must be so proud. Bush/Cheney create a Terrah list and it's secret, but now you love the list because it's about taking guns away from people.

You don't know and can't find out if you're on it and there's no way to get your name removed. It took Ted Kennedy (who was on the list) a few weeks to get off it. How long do you think it will take you or an Arabian born Cab Driver to get off it?

But since it's guns - to hell with due process and freedom of information right?

What happens when the people on the list aren't allowed to travel or vote? Maybe there 4th amendment rights aren't that important either and we should wiretap their phones and homes, OK?

So, are you going to be so supportive of the same Terrah list when there's a GOP congress or administration?

[onehandle]

8. Guns > People. nt

[benEzra]

11. Civil rights and due process > Bush/Cheney secret blacklists. (n/t)

[Statistical]

16. Rights of the People > Govt Secret Lists n/t

[TPaine7]

19. No, people > guns. That is why people have the right to own and carry guns. n/t

[onehandle]

22. Now that I think about it, we're both wrong.

It's Gun Owners > Non-Gun Owners.

Yes. That's it.

[jazzhound]

32. "It's Gun Owners > Non-Gun Owners. Yes. That's it."

More misrepresentation of the attitudes of gun owners. What a shock.

Yeah, yeah.........I know. You didn't "directly" accuse gun owners of this attitude. :eyes:

[NewMoonTherian]

34. There is no distinction.

There are not gun owners and non-gun owners whose rights are at odds. These are the rights of United States citizens, and they affect everyone equally. Unless you're a felon or otherwise ineligible to own a firearm, you have every last single right that I have.

[Name removed]

36. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TPaine7]

38. "We're both wrong"? Speak for yourself, onehandle.

YOU were wrong. "Guns > People" is a silly straw man. I challenge you to find a gun rights supporter anywhere in the world who believes that guns are more important than people.

"Gun Owners > Non-Gun Owners" is another silly straw man. Gun owners are not more important than non-gun owners, nor does anyone claim that they are. The rights of gun owners are more important than the preferences of those who don't own guns and don't want others to own and carry them.

A profoundly illogical minority of extremists actually think that their preferences are rights. They actually believe that they have rights to certain feelings. The imaginary right to certain feelings--like the right to "feel safe"--is an infantile absurdity. You are no more entitled to feel safe than you are to feel desirable or to feel happy or to feel calm. You have a right not to be threatened or attacked, but not a right to feel anything.

The fact that your neighbor has a gun, in her safe, on her person or in her purse is not a threat. Her pulling it out and pointing it at you is. You have a right not to be subjected to the latter (assuming your innocence), but your feelings about the former have the same legal status as your "right" to feel desired by her.

You have no rights to feelings. This is a principle most of us learned by the age of three. Grow up.

[Kolesar]

41. Hammer cocked, with a "round" in the chamber, and sauntering through a restaurant?

Lunacy. Watch Friday's segment on PBS "Need to Know" www.pbs.org/needtoknow

[X_Digger]

43. How does one have it available..

.. in the parking lot at 1am without bringing it to the restaurant at 10pm?

or are you objecting to having one in the chamber and having it cocked and locked? All of the firearms I noted in the open carry piece had external and internal safeties, making them quite safe to carry in that condition.

[PavePusher]

44. Yes, that is actually the safe way...

to carry a 1911 pattern handgun.

I didn't see any "sauntering", but perhaps our definitions vary.

How is this "lunacy"? Expound, please.

[PavePusher]

45. Not to mention that the episode did a bit of...

1. Mendacity through ommision.

2. Carefully non-nuetral phrasing by the narrator.

3. Openly pushing a political position.

So much for unbiased reporting.


Edit: And no counter-weight for self-contradicting, bald-faced liar Bloomberg? Nope, no bias here folks, step right up and pay your nickel, this way to the egress...

[Callisto32]

50. Uh, I don't think quotation marks mean what you think they mean.

"Round" is the correct term. See, I used them here because the word was representing itself. This is appropriate.

Carrying a single-action autoloader (one in which pulling the trigger only drops the hammer, not cock and then drop) "cocked and locked. (Round in the chamber, hammer back, safety applied) is the way you do it.

Don't call something "lunacy" (used here because I am using the same word as you used) because you don't understand it.

[Callisto32]

49. Hows about:

My right to live my life as I see fit, so long as nobody is harmed > Your right to tell me what to do, based on some cockeyed perception about what I am likely to do.

[one-eyed fat man]

52. Ok we got it now.

Unconstitutional secret terror watch lists are bad when they are used by a president you hated and but they are just fucking peachy keen when employed by a president you like, especially against a population you hate.

[proteus_lives]

28. Nohandle: Control > Rights.

[slackmaster]

12. Hey groovedaddy, would you be in favor of stopping people on the Sooper Seekrit List from voting?

What other civil rights would you summarily take away from people who are merely suspected of crimes, or suspected of being potential criminals?

[groovedaddy]

15. No and none. I posted in attempt to promote (provoke?) dialogue. I will, at times, post the

opinions of others that I'm not in agreement with.

[slackmaster]

17. Thanks

:hi:

[AtheistCrusader]

29. That's a good purpose.

:toast:

[Glassunion]

31. YOU!

Whhhhhhy you little... Got my panties all in a bunch...

Thanks for the post.

[Kolesar]

42. Flying lessons...eom

[AtheistCrusader]

21. So you think we have 1,100 armed terrorists in the US that have done nil for the last 6 years?

Boogeyman much?

Chances are nearing 100% that those '1,100' people are all normal citizens, that have no business being on that list.

[jazzhound]

24. The hypocritical gun "control" equation:

Millions of dollars directed by individual citizens to President Obama's campaign = Righteous Grassroots Effort

Millions of dollars directed by individual citizens to the NRA = Evil Gun Lobby

[GreenStormCloud]

26. Well, at least the NYT admits that we are a powerful force and that we are winning.

What did the near-diusaster in New York have to do with guns? That was a bomb. Granted, there was a gun in the car, but that didn't make the bomb any worse.

[Glassunion]

27. This is a big pile of horseshit. A really big steamy one. I'm with the "Gun-Lobby" on this one, 100%

According to the ACLU there are over 1 million names on this super secret list. A list that once you are on, you can never get off. EVER. This list is plagued with errors that even the government admits are causing issues for law abiding Americans with no (ZERO) ties to terrorism. This list has bothered me for quite some time. I did not like this list when the government started to use it to restrict travel and I like it even less now that they wish to expand its use.

The list is fucked. Fix the list and I may applaud the use of it. Until then using it for ANYTHING is a waste of time. What also bothers me, and I have feared this from the beginning is what else are they going to start using the list for? Voting, employment, driver’s licenses, library cards, etc… Scary to say the least. I’ll explain.

The lists contain names that are not linked to a physical description, birth date, or other unique identifier that allows someone to easily determine whether the individual trying to get on a plane, or buy a gun is the ACTUAL person on the list. Large numbers of people have been delayed, searched, or interrogated at airports because they are "false positives" who have names that are the same or similar to names on the list. Senator Ted Kennedy is the most famous false positive, because he was repeatedly delayed at airports because someone else identified only as "T. Kennedy" was on the list.

There have been numerous cases in which Americans with no known ties to terrorism have been placed on the list, most notably the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "The evidence used to compile the watch list is often fragmentary and can be of varying degrees of credibility. It is not, in other words, the equivalent of a criminal history report." Susan Collins, R-Maine (who by the way is on the list). One government report concluded about 35 percent of the people on the list were there "based on outdated information or material unrelated to terrorism," Collins said. Yep, about 350,000 people have their name on a list who should not be there at all.

There are a few names on the list such as Ted Kennedy that are rather popular names. Like Samuel Adams for instance. Yep, heaven forbid you are a little patriotic, have the last name of Adams and you name your child Samuel. Basically you have fucked him for life. He will never be able to fly without permission from the government. Buy a gun without having to spend time and money fighting the results of the list. So he will be denied a right by a list that is admittedly inaccurate. By the time little Sammy grows up, he may have problems voting, attending college, getting a job, driving a car, etc… Fuck him, he is a terrorist.

How about Robert Johnson? Most of us may know him as a revolutionary blues man from the early 1900’s. The government knows that name as an evil bad guy. According to the US Census, the last name Johnson is the second most popular name in the United States, over 2 million people. According the same report, Robert is the third most popular first name. How many people do you think this would effect? There are about 5 million people named Robert in this country and let’s say that .81% (percentage of Americans with that name) of those named Robert have the last name Johnson. Holy Fuck Batman, there are over 40,000 terrorists named Robert running around! Now that is but ONE entry in the list, that just made terrorists out of over 40,000 people. How many people might possible share a name with someone on the list? I can only speculate, but I think it would be safe to say that it is several million if not 10’s of millions.

Personally I “feel” that we as Americans should be able to move freely about this country without permission from our government. If I am taking a domestic flight, I do understand the security at the gate. But, because my mother decided to give me a name (in the top 15 in case you were wondering), and our last name which is shared by over 65,000 other people in this country, I’m fucked. And so are the other 423 people in this country who share my name.

So let’s recap… We have an admittedly inaccurate list which we want to use to deny rights to millions of 100% innocent people. Way to fucking go Bush!!!

I’m all for stopping terrorism. Big fan of it. But when you allow the government to compile a list of names that contain peace activists, environmentalists, senators, members of congress, pilots, returning war veterans, Federal Air Marshals (yep, the guys and gals who are SUPPOSED to be on the plane), Nelson Mandela, brigadier general for the United States Air Force (someone else who I would love to see on a plane) you have completely failed.

In October 2008, it was revealed that Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent political activists as terrorists, and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases, with labels indicating that they were terror suspects. The protest groups were also entered as terrorist organizations. During a hearing, it was revealed that these individuals and organizations had been placed in the databases because of a surveillance operation that targeted opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war. Fuck em! Stoopid tree huggers…

If you care to read more, there is plenty on the ACLUs website on the no-fly list.

As for this legislation… Big pile of horseshit…

[Glassunion]

30. Oh! And another thing...

Shhhhhhh... Don't tell anyone. This is all sooper seecret... If you are a bad guy on the list or you even think that you are on the list. Change your name.

Remember, it is a name based system, so if your new name is not on the list you are good to go... Identity theft is also another option.

Shhhhhh...

Ok, I'm done ranting.

[jazzhound]

33. "Ok, I'm done ranting."

So presumably your panties are feeling comfy? :-)

[Euromutt]

37. I applaud all you have said above, and I have a few points to add

Everybody remember Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be "Crotch Bomber" who tried to blow up Delta flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit last Christmas? The U.S. intelligence community had intel on the guy, but he wasn't on the "No-Fly" list.

Which is another sooper sekret thing about the "No-Fly" list: people who are actually suspected terrorists aren't on the list. Why not? Because the intelligence community doesn't want to reveal that information to every airline check-in clerk in the country. So all the hassle we're putting any number of people through (because while there are an estimated million names on the list, anyone with one of those million names can get hassled) isn't going to do a thing to stop any real terrorists.

Which is another problem with this proposed legislation, namely that there's a crucial difference between a criminal suspect, and a terror suspect. A criminal suspect is someone who is suspected of having committed an offense that is known to have actually taken place. A terror suspect is someone is suspected, sort of, of possibly, maybe becoming involved, however tangentially, with some unspecified possible terrorist act at some unspecified future date. The two not even remotely comparable.

[aikoaiko]

35. Once again, the NYTimes embraces fear mongering

and some people gobble it up. nom nom nom.

[Taitertots]

40. Which other rights shall we deny them without a trial on the basis of secret evidence?

There are around 1,000,000 of them.

Arbitrary punishments with no trial, no evidence, and no way to exonerate yourself. With the whole basis for these restrictions being paranoia about terrorism.

[gorfle]

46. THE NO FLY LIST TAKES AWAY CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS WITHOUT DUE PROCESS!

Congress, for example, is cowering before the gun lobby insistence that even terrorist suspects who are placed on the “no-fly list” must not be denied the right to buy and bear arms.

Congress SHOULD be cowering!

The "no-fly" list is a farce! It is a secret list that anyone can be put on by fiat. Additionally, the government has admitted that known terrorists are not on the list because they do not want to tip-off high-value targets by having them caught in a low-level screening. We also know that non-terrorist American citizens are on the list, as the late Senator Kennedy was.

But the worst thing about the original proposal is that barring someone the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms because of the no-fly list would be the revocation of a constitutional right without due process!

This is absolutely repugnant! You cannot revoke Constitutional rights just because someone in the FBI decided to put you on a secret watch list!

Who would support such a hideous affront to liberty? Who could be so blinded by fear of the "terrorism boogeyman" to fall for a proposal like this?

[spin]

53. +1,000,000 (n/t)

[Callisto32]

47. Damn, how DARE we stand on due process.

How DARE we be opposed to having rights stripped by being placed on a sekret squirrel list with no criteria available as to how you get on, no way to get off, and no review.

We obviously hate children/cute puppies/moms (ESPECIALLY yours!).

The NYT is becoming a laughing stock, even our podunk local paper doesn't print intellectual by-product like that drivel.....