So, if there are any journalists reading this (and I don’t imagine there are, but anyway): here’s a question you need to put to everyone calling for banning people on the “terror watch list” from buying guns:
What Constitutional rights are optional?
People are put on the terror watch list at the whim of federal law enforcement. There is no mechanism to challenge the designation, and as I discussed months ago, people who are known to be harmless are still on the lists, because they are lists of names, not lists of identities.
Hillary Clinton is rather famously under FBI investigation. Should her First Amendment rights be revoked because she seems to have been very sloppy with secrets vital to national security? Should her Fourth Amendment rights be suspended because she might have committed a crime?
Or forget Democratic party grandees who will never be held to account for their actions. Let’s talk about the Orlando shooter. It’s completely fatuous to think that forbidding a terrorist to buy a gun from an FFL will mean he can’t get a gun (or make a bomb). Forbidding people without DEA license to buy Ecstasy doesn’t mean they don’t. Forbidding people to enter the US without a visa doesn’t mean they don’t. Forbidding Parisians to own machine guns doesn’t mean terrorists don’t manage it.
So merely adding suspected terrorists to NICS won’t stop them from arming themselves. Clearly, we need to imprison them to prevent future atrocities–they won’t be getting guns in prison.
The right to an indictment by a grand jury? The right to a speedy and public trial? The generalized right to not be deprived of liberty without due process?
Which of these rights is optional? Which can be suspended on nothing more than suspicion?
This is a question the media needs to be asking everyone who would suspend Second Amendment rights on the basis of law enforcement suspicion.
And if you’re a journalist wondering why so many Americans think you’re the willingly lying tools of the Democratic Party: this is why. Because you don’t ask real questions, you just lick the boots of politicians who care nothing for Constitution.
stoneslinger
I’ve been saying this exact same thing for quite a while -why would the second point on a list of individual rights suddenly be a state right for a state militia? The Bill of Rights is a list of INDIVIDUAL Rights that specifically denies the Federal Government involvement without true, substantial evidence of a wrong doing.
The Second, Fourth and Tenth Amendments together should be a uncaged titan for arms freedom, but they had to be properly pruned and looked after on this Tree of Liberty. Had each generation up till now allowed the roots of liberty, not unbridled passion, to cleave together with truth in their hearts, maybe we would be in a stronger position to wield the truth.
If the press has unknowingly taught us something, it would be the pen is mightier than the sword. Demonstrated time and again throughout history, the written or spoken word has the power to turn weak minded individuals into political slaves through propoganda. These same journalists wouldn’t dare write a story claiming the First Amendment should be repealed for the Founders couldn’t foresee the technological advances of free speech would lead to the development of the cellular phone which are used every day to coordinate planned attacks on citizens of America and the world at large. The collusion of words and camera have brought about more change, more quickly than the right to bear arms alone. That’s why the First is first, so free men would have the same tools to fight a despot.