This post would be barely worth writing, except that I have just listened to several cable channels state with great urgency that it is a “controversy.”
It’s no controversy. The government cannot take away a citizen’s rights without due process. Currently, as explained in an ACLU lawsuit, the No-Fly List procedure itself appears to lack due process, so linking it to Second Amendment rights would be similarly unconstitutional:
“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…. the standards for inclusion on the No Fly List are unconstitutionally vague, and innocent people are blacklisted without a fair process to correct government error. Our lawsuit seeks a meaningful opportunity for our clients to challenge their placement on the No Fly List because it is so error-prone and the consequences for their lives have been devastating. Over the years since we filed our suit — and in response to it — the government has made some reforms, but they are not enough.”
Anti-gun hysterics in Congress (incompetent) , on the campaign trail (unscrupulous) , in the White House ( opportunistic) and on social media (ignorant) don’t care right now about such nuances and trivia as due process, and on the social media side, apparently won’t until Donald Trump’s state police knock on the door to take them away. They’d be happy to empower their great and good government masters to place “bad people” on no-fly-lists on a whim, because we just have to “do something” about mass shootings. The emotional statements on social media are embarrassing, the misleading statements from the news media are irresponsible, and the individual rights-defying statements by the President, elected officials and candidates are frightening.
Watch the scene from “A Man for All Seasons,” you fools.
Watch the scene, and learn.
Ethics Alarms 
This may sound insensitive, but in a nation of 320 million people, I believe that America is probably a quite reasonably safe place for the vast majority of those people nearly all the time. Orlando is a tragedy but it is still a rare tragedy in America.
And this may sound cynical, but I don’t think for a that liberal progressive politicians like Hillary Clinton and President Obama, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Diane Feinstein, and others like them, are really all that sincerely concerned about stopping gun violence. There were over sixty shootings in Chicago over the Memorial Day weekend, all the result of ordinary, garden variety street crime. Not a peep did I hear from any of these liberal progressives about that gun violence. I theorize that these politicians are more interested in disarming the American people… step by step… incrementally… until the American culture falls more in line with the rest of the “civilized world.” They merely exploit these tragedies when they happen to advance their agenda.
It took under two hours after I first heard the breaking news in Orlando before Tom Brokaw was on the Sunday morning talk shows demanding stricter gun control measures. Soon, there were others.
The tragedy in Orlando, an act of terrorism, is not new to the world and in fact similar tragedies occur in certain parts of the world just about every week. Whether the perpetrators use guns, machetes, knives, bombs, incendiaries, or some kind of chemical or biological devise, the heartless terrorists are always able to find a tool or a method to inflict mass casualties.
America is still a very safe place. But the death of 49 innocents and the wounding of over 50 others, is an emotional shock to our culture as it was intended to be. However, in the big picture, the actual damage is relatively minor when compared to the accumulative toll of ordinary street crime violence.
Unfortunately dishonest politicians are more than happy to exploit emotions that naturally follow from such tragedies like this try to score political points.
And too, much of the media jumps right in to “stir the pot” and damn the facts, damn the law, and damn any real effort to solve any real problem.
But Jack the children!! Think about the children!!
If people are too dangerous to be allowed on an airplane, should not people have a right to know who these people are, so we can take the necessary precautions ourselves?
Maybe we can require people on the list to wear an identifying badge on their left sleeve- a yellow star perhaps?
But Michael, in Denmark, we are all Jews..
I think that it is unlikely that Trump would support this lawsuit. First, both his kids own guns and hunt and he has a concealed carry permit. Also, he would alienate his supporters in the NRA.http://www.outdoorlife.com/articles/hunting/2016/01/qa-donald-trump-guns-hunting-and-conservation
I think both sides of the gun control debate are being chumped. The state and the MSM are desperate to deflect attention away from the root causes: Islamic fundamentalism and the double standards that enable it.
We are confronted with a militant, totalitarian ideology with world domination ambitions. However, those that follow that ideology have somehow become a client group of the left. This is highly ironic, because the ideology in question is arguably extremely right wing: Patriarchy, supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, totalitarian capitalism and the like are all included in the base premises. Moreover, everywhere this ideology is put into practice, most of these base premises are highly actualized: We see these things run in real time.
That said, the fact that this guy shot up the bar presented a decent scapegoat. However, if he had used other means the resident apologista would have gone into overdrive blaming the proverbial kitchen sink: Climate change, Trump, xenophobia, etc… this case has presented a bit of that. Essentially, they do everything except confront what drove this person to do what he did.
And for those left wingers who run interference for the Islamists: Look up what happened to the Iranian communists who supported the revolution in that country in the late 1970’s. Here is a hint, their Islamic partners made sure they did not see the 1980’s.
This is an epic fail.
What Adam Winkler fails to mention is that searches and seizures pursuant to a warrant, even though they are granted via ex parte proceedings, are temporary. No court can grant permanent authority to search persons in an ex parte hearing.
Part of the problem with the no-fly list, as Jack correctly points out, is that nobody who is on it knows how they got there, and there is no effective mechanism for challenging their addition to the list. In case somebody’s curious as to just how difficult it is to get off the list can be found here, at the ACLU site.
If you read the link above under #2, you’ll find that if you are abroad while you are placed on the no-fly list, you have a constitutional right under the 14th amendment to be allowed to return home. In other words, the constitution forbids the U.S. government from stranding a U.S. citizen in another country no matter how deep on double-secret probation they are.
Given the fact that the right to return home is a derivative right under the 14th amendment and the government acknowledges that, how much harder would it be to deny a fundamental, enumerated right, one that is enshrined in the original Bill of Rights, to a person on the no-fly list? It should be flatly impossible, and I can only imagine that even the most liberal Supreme Court would have a tough time coming to another conclusion.
Without due process, including a way to effectively challenge inclusion on the no-fly list, a law proposing to ban firearms purchase to those named on the list should be a dead letter. Yet for some reason, the Democrats are determined to do just that, without providing due process.
It is almost as if the Democratic leadership hates America.
I wonder what other things we could do to persons on the no-fly list? Could we prohibit them from voting? Or practicing law or medicine?
And why must this list be secret? why not make it public so we can all know who are the terrorists. We could even require them to wear a distinctive emblem. A yellow star, perhaps?
The left, especially the far left, has for quite some time been in favor of ignoring the Constitution, and, hence, due process. They are not in favor of the rule of law, but rather the rule of emotions.
In the meantime, the derp continues.
https://disqus.com/home/discussion/phillydotcom/we_need_mlk_style_civil_disobedience_to_stop_assault_rifles/#comment-2733252185
“Do you know how stupid you sound? Your analogy doesn’t even make sense. Using MLK JR as a means to take CIVIL LIBERTIES AWAY from Americans? You sound more like the KKK than MLK. The KKK wanted to disarm blacks, which is exactly what you are advocating. You racist bigot!”
Nothing like throwing the concept of due process>
Friends of mine who want “Assault Rifles” banned, when 99.9% can not tell you what one is, agreed with me when I said that all I wanted was to be able to have a shot gun, they thought that was fine.
This is the shot gun I want.
My friends say I tricked them and that Im a asshole.
They are right on both counts.
Yet I notice, since we are on many of the same Facebook lists, you are not going toe-to-toe with the many anti-gun hysterics saying some of the stupidest stuff I have ever read in my life regarding guns and gun policy. Why is that? (For the most part,l I’m not either.) Because it’s hopeless? Because you don’t want to be called a murderer? Because you don’t want to be de-friended? I’m just curious, because I know you don’t hesitate to speak your mind.
Because its a waste of time. None of them , and I mean none of them, know a damn thing about weapons. They couldn’t pick an AR-15 out of a line up. They think that gun violence has gone up when it has really gone done. It would be like talking to a dog. No matter how much I spoke they wouldn’t get it.
Also I find that posting on line you lose the nuance of the human voice and facial expressions that allow people to have civil conversations so everything becomes an argument.
Then again, you avoid the temptation to reach over and strangle someone bloviating nonsense…that’s very helpful.
“It would be like talking to a dog.”
Very funny, very true, and very, very, sad.
I always go toe-to-toe with anti-gun hysterics. I had been doing so for the past nineteen years, starting with Usenet newsgroups.
Good for you. It has to be done.
I also learned a lot from the discussions.
I will do it in person and on line with people that can have a civil discussion but on Facebook tend to get hysterical.
You should see Usenet.
I regularly post on soc.culture.israel. There are several neo-Nazi posters who post their Judenhass and accuse me of sucking rectums. One of them even forges me.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/soc.culture.israel/pQzfxVmR9RU
You should be able to tell the difference between me and the forger.
As usual, the comments here are well thought out and compelling. What I have not seen yet is an actual deconstruction of the events that took place well before the self-proclaimed radical set his sights on the Pulse night club.
Furthermore, once again one side immediately attributes the root cause of mass shootings to an inanimate object that has the capability to inflict substantial casualties or, as the New York Times editorial(s) puts it, Republican rhetoric that fuels hate toward the LGBT community and other minorities and that the pro-gun lobby is complicit in facilitating these horrific events. It seems to me that such rhetoric fuels the intransigence by the pro gun side to stick to their guns so to speak.
Whether it’s the NRA and the millions people that make up its membership, or non-gun owners who would not know an automatic weapon from a semi- automatic weapon used by the military both sides are arguing from a state of fear.
At the heart of the problem is how do we combat that fear without sacrificing the very freedoms we want to protect. We aid, abet and give comfort to our enemies when we fight internally over these issues. By dividing us they distract us from their activities; so they win a tactical advantage. By causing us to sacrifice our fundamental freedoms they win some battles. When they force our retreat into isolation they win the war.
Irrespective of what we call it, radical Islamists or simply extremists we do know the name of the organizations that seek to inflict as much death and destruction to the civilians living in western Europe, Israel and the United States. Each has a name and a state of war can be declared on each one.
I am interested to know if an actual state of war is declared by Congress could we have more flexibility in dealing with individuals – citizens and non-citizens alike – who conspire to do harm without sacrificing our cultural values and our Constitution that makes us who we are? Could we use existing espionage laws to level charges against those operatives we find that aid and abet the declared enemy? Could we hold those that profess allegiance to our declared enemy as enemy combatants, i.e. POW’s? Why should we focus on a broad class of people when our focus should be on the few?
As I see it rather than focusing on the methods of destruction we should focus on how do we mitigate the planning and execution of acts of terror. If we interrupt the planning we prevent the execution and resultant damage caused by foreign agents, irrespective of their citizenship, to inflict great damage.
One final thought. For those that argue that the 2nd amendment only envisioned the populace only owing muskets and not semi automatic AR 15’s. I should point out that operative word is arms not muskets. If they meant only muskets they would have said only muskets but the framers understood that weapons technology would advance hence the general word arms was used.
Furthermore, given that muskets were the state of the art technology at the time and used by the British and Revolutionary armies such an argument could also mean that the framers meant that the civilian population should be entitled to possess equivalent armaments to combat any oppressive government.
Great comment–a COTD, Chris.
“For those that argue that the 2nd amendment only envisioned the populace only owing muskets and not semi automatic AR 15’s”..
Is this the dumbest thing you’ve heard lately from the anti-gun hysterics, or the argument that Congress should ban bullets “since they aren’t protected”? It’s a close call for me.
The latter.
I had been reading and posting on Usenet newsgroups for the past nineteen years. Many messages were cross-posted onto talk.politics.guns. (Usenet allowed posts in multiple forums simultaneously, allowing people subscribed to different newsgroups to interact.) I read a lot of dumb things from anti-gun posters. Their arguments were easily disposed. In fact,t he whole issue about people on the terror watch list buying firearms came up as early as 2005.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/talk.politics.guns/s9896yKUz5o%5B1-25%5D
Christopher C. Morton, William A. Levinson, and Clayton E. Cramer were among those who defended the truth and took down those dumb anti-gun arguments.
Personally I think the draft should be reinstated so these weenies can learn the difference between a semi-automatic weapon and automatic weapon. As I recall, the M-14 and M-16 had a switch so you could fire full automatic in the military. However, you can’t buy one with that capability in the U.S.
A selector switch on an M-14 was a rarity. From the B.A.R., the Army was already aware of the operator’s propensity for a clip-emptying burst in a firefight. Not sure what the reasoning was for making it almost universal on the M-16.