The House Democratic sit-in calling for a vote on gun legislation ended on Thursday afternoon, with lawmakers vowing to take up the cause once more after the July 4 recess.
But if the Democrats choose to continue pursuing what has been their chief goal so far – a bill that would bar those on the federal government’s terrorist watch list from purchasing firearms — they will face opposition from some of their traditional allies.
House Speaker Paul Ryan cited the ACLU’s stand against the bill at a press conference Thursday. “In this country, we do not take away people’s constitutional rights without due process. This is not just Republicans saying this. It’s groups like the ACLU who are saying this,” he said.
The ACLU opposes the Democratic proposal on the grounds that the government’s watchlisting system “is error-prone and unreliable because it uses vague and overbroad criteria and secret evidence to place individuals on blacklists without a meaningful process to correct government error and clear their names.”
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s leading Muslim American civil rights group, also came out against the proposal on Wednesday.
“It would seem the Senate is willing to only apply constitutional limitations on the American Muslim community, which is disproportionately impacted by federal watch lists,” CAIR wrote in a statement, adding that it does, by contrast, support gun-control measures like expanded background checks and lifting the ban on federal research on gun violence.
Although some Republicans are citing due process concerns to oppose the no-fly-no-buy proposal, few are actually supporting legislation to reform the watchlist. Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., introduced a bill that would prohibit the Department of Homeland Security from barring anyone not convicted of a crime from flying on an airplane or boarding a cruise ship. It has no cosponsors. A more modest bill introduced in 2013 to speed up the redress process for being placed on the list had only two sponsors, and no Republicans. Not one Republican joined a 2014 letter to DHS protesting flaws in the listing process — although the Democratic signatories to that letter now evidently think it’s good enough to use for barring gun sales.
Top photo: House Speaker Paul Ryan at a press conference Thursday complaining that Democrats fundraised off of their gun-related sit-in.
If your party supports Voter ID laws, then you do support taking away people’s constitutional rights without due process. What if the burden of proof was on the federal government to prove a person wasn’t who they said they were. Why do voters who voted in the past and don’t have the new requirements for ID have to shoulder the expense and time for acquiring an ID when the government can just send that person an ID. Maybe the non-existent issue of Voter fraud can be eliminated. How hilarious! A country that has low voter turnout because people are too lazy to show up at the voting booths thinking that same population, when given the chance to also commit voter fraud, would. HA!
Our Congress is as insane as the oligarch’s who have purchased them! Every day, more and more, with the insane and outright cruel and inhumane actions of our Congress, our police, and our horrible courts..aimed directly at destroying all of our civil liberties en-masse, in one fell swoop, makes me really contemplate how it might ever be possible to change the direction of this foul nation without an assault rifle! As heinous and ugly as the actions of my supposed government are, it is pretty obvious that it will not be long before they come for me also! Imagine trying to stop a Hitler, a Mussolini, or a Pinochet,…just as examples, with protest only and you see mass graves and the destruction of civil society. I at least want to be able to protect myself from a growing criminal government that says it is not!
I mean this is just a mess – obviously due to the modern compounding of corruption – so much so that the nuanced way of thinking would have to navigate through the layers of parties allegedly combating certain things but using them to pretend to accomplish other things
Perhaps instead of being caught up in the stew of trying to mitigate the consequences of wholistically bad choices, some pure souls might want to maybe end those things
I seem to recall a time, not too long ago, where Democrats were outraged by the very idea of a watchlist.
Now that they want to use it for their own purposes, it’s a perfectly cromulent idea to keep lists of people that imply they are or intend to be criminals, without even a vague whiff of due process.
One the flipside, despite being the self-proclaimed champions of Constitutional rights the Republicans often find themselves at odds with the ACLU, but those guys are alright when their position aligns with that of the right.
The ACLU consistently stands up for the Bill of Rights and Constitution, even when the “cause” is unpopular such as “Flag Burning” or KKK free speech. The neocon right and neoliberal left have consistently looked for a reset button on Constitutional law. As the number of veterans that served and took their Oath seriously declines and politicians and civil servants willing to comment sedition to achieve their “desires” increases it will destroy the foundation of our Nation. Too few stand against sedition whether spawned by left or right ideologies .
Seems the Second Amendment is the only one that is sacrosanct. As for the others, the dismantling of a free press and religious encroachment in schools, government, etc, unreasonable searches and seizures, etc. What about them, Paul?
Care to share what ACLU thinks of them?
Either all Constitutional Amendments are sacrosanct or none are. If a blacklist can justify taking a simple liberty to fly and is expanded to take a Right, no Right is safe. Too many want to pick and choose the Rights they like and those they would deny. I swore an Oath to uphold the Constitution in its entirety, not just the parts I preferred.
get your dammed gus under control there are so many floating around they are being smuggled into Canada and we are having more gun violence now more than we ever had.
You just need to build a wall and get the US to pay for it.
“Smuggled” is the operative word. Got the money got the guns is a universal truism. No law will change this. Those willing to pay the price in money and blood will do harm.
Guns do not pull their own triggers. Blame that on your Canadian friends for pointing the damn thing at someone and firing it! No different than American’s.
Let’s, at the very least, put it on the floor for discussion. Saying no to everything is not working. We are slowly putting to death a system that was almost good – never great, but occasionally good enough.
All constitutional rights can be regulated as long as it follows the letter & spirit of the U.S. Constiution.
The problem with Republicans and Conservatives is that since the so-called “War on Drugs” in the late 1060’s and the so-called “War on a Tactic” after 9/11 – they have gladly passed laws NOT following the letter & spirit of other constitutional amendments.
The U.S. Supreme Court started gutting the letter & spirit of the 4th Amendment in the 1968 case “Terry v. Ohio” instead of requiring a constitutional amendment. The dissenting view in “Terry v. Ohio” warned that the United States was traveling down a “totalitarian path” (verbatim).
Since Republicans and Conservatives have not only been silent about skipping a constitutional amendment but supported bypassing the rule of law, they have no room to criticize gun rights going down the same path!
“House Speaker Paul Ryan cited the ACLU”
I guess we should play an old tune from America’s beginnings, “The World Turned Upside-Down.”
The lesion both left and right will ignore the Constitution to get what they want.
Yes, I am opposed to giving govt authorities the power to deny rights and invoke broad surveillance on the basis of suspicion. The FBI ties this increased power to an emotional issue–gun control of terrorists–to obtain a lawful precedent. But we should all know that terrorists intent on mass killings in which they know they will also die will not be defeated by an inability to buy a gun at Walmart.
And who can be accused of terrorism anyway? How does the govt define it. If someone is suspected of being a terrorist, prosecute them. If they are not citizens, deport them.
But to have the power to deny rights based on a secret profile that can’t even be litigated or publicly shared is just unconstitutional.
—-“And who can be accused of terrorism anyway?”—
The answer is, presently, ….just about anybody. Just ask the fourteen nuns in New England that were put on the ‘no-fly list’ some years ago by the police for their peace activism. Or that great thorn in the butt of conservatives in the U.S., Senator Edward Kennedy, were he alive today.
But to really get a feel for the elasticity of the designation, terrorist, in the hands of authorities, one has to only reflect on the efforts of the DEA to redesignate drug users as such. Following 9/11, the so-called Drug Czar was the first, I believe, to get to the microphones at a press conference, seeking to educate the world that drug users and dealers were funding terrorism and as such were terrorists. I like to think that they weren’t successful but who knows. The Lists are all secret. A Justice Dept. audit in 2009 found that the ‘no-fly list was over 700,000 persons and increasing by 20,000 per month. The ACLU claimed it was over 1,000,000 two years later. Clearly there are a lot more people on the No-fly List than those that present “a clear and immanent threat” to an aircraft.
The requirement for due process exists in a free society in response to this type of chicanery by authority. This whole jaw-dropping saga with lists and secrecy in a leading free world country is a stark reminder of the reasons for such protections to be guaranteed in all cases, …period.
I applaud House Speaker, Paul Ryan’s courage in confronting this festering outrage.
And to think…at one time, someone risked their career and livelihood to try and leak the no-fly list to the public. Sadly, before it could get published, it fell into the hands of the infamous Daniel Domscheit-Berg who chose to steal the information and destroy it, rather than publish it.
I’m for any law that prevents any citizen from buying an assault rifle.
nobody cares that you have no principles.
Well you’re in luck! The National Firearms Act (1934), while not a full ban, strictly limits the types of assault rifles available. The hoops one has to jump through, not to mention the prohibitive costs involved, ensure that essentially zero crimes are committed with assault rifles in the U.S.
“In this country, we do not take away people’s constitutional rights without due process.”
Bullshit.