Hi old friends at BMG! I remain as always invigorated by the passion of the netroots and appreciative of your support. I have an issue to share with you today and look forward to your thoughts.
By coincidence, after weeks of research, I filed a bill this week just hours before the San Bernardino massacre unfolded. The bill is currently a docket known as HD 4331, and it would prohibit individuals on the FBI’s terrorist watch list and no-fly list from acquiring firearms in Massachusetts. In the short time since I have filed this, I have heard two recurring themes. Most people either feel that it’s a no-brainer or they are incredulous that this even needs to be filed. I guess that’s the definition of common sense and why the bill now has a list of 27 bi-partisan co-sponsors. If you’d like to read about the genesis of my filing The Salem News covers it all today.
The idea behind this bill is not new. On the federal level, the bill was first introduced in 2007 and since that time, the NRA has successfully blocked its passage. This was on full display this week when a vote miserably failed pretty much along party lines with Democrats in support and Republicans opposed.
I’m quite proud of my own Congressman Seth Moulton, quoted in the Salem News article above, and the rest of our Congressional delegation for their leadership especially after I got a taste of how the NRA operates when my bill became the subject of an “action alert” from their MA affiliate. The email to their members and the legislature said the bill would “create a list” the government could use to strip Americans of their rights. As is so often the case with the way the NRA addresses gun legislation, this description was wildly misleading and inaccurate. Interesting too, at the bottom of the email, there was, of course, a fundraiser. Not missing an opportunity to fundraise after tragedy, this NRA affiliate is raffling off 20 revolvers and rifles, known as the “Lucky 20”.
This legislation absolutely does not “create” any list. It uses an already existing terrorist watch list, administered by the FBI since 2003. This bill proposes that a check with this terror watch list and no fly list be part of a 9-part background check that is already done– designed to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. I encourage you to read yesterday’s Boston Herald story about my bill and the Boston Globe editorial board’s endorsement of it, including an incredible graphic. I was also in studio for NECN’s Broadside with Sue O’Connell last night.
There are, of course, civil liberties concerns with all counterterrorism programs conducted by the federal government, including the terrorist watch list. These programs deserve scrutiny, oversight, and transparency. Interestingly, however, I have not seen our NRA-backed friends support dissolution or greater oversight of the terrorist watch list until now. If you’re on the watch list, you’re deemed too dangerous to fly, or travel in or out of the country; you can have your assets frozen; you can be subject to extra searches and surveillance. None of this has drawn widespread Republican objection. Their objection interestingly only comes up when it could cut in to gun manufacturers’ record sales.
I feel strongly that if you’re too dangerous to get on an airplane, you’re too dangerous to buy a gun. We’ve seen all too often how easy it is for people with dark intentions to purchase guns and use them as tools of mass murder. It happens in this country each and every day. This bill certainly would not solve that issue entirely. Massachusetts has the second-lowest gun death rate in the country, thanks in part to our strong state laws, but it remains far too easy to bring illegal guns in to Massachusetts thanks to lax laws in other states. This glaring problem can only be addressed at the federal level. However, state action can make a dent in gun violence, and send a message to Congress that states are willing to act when they have failed.
A vast majority of gun owners support this step that can help keep guns out of the hands of terrorists. 85% of gun owners also support universal background checks. Unfortunately, the voices of these law-abiding citizens often get drowned out by the extremists at the NRA, more focused on protecting gun manufacturers’ bottom line at any cost – even at the cost of the blood of American citizens.
George Legeros, a Virginia gun owner surveyed by the Washington Post for their story on the silent majority of gun owners who support some steps to stem the tide of gun violence, told the Post that “the NRA doesn’t represent me. For lack of a better word, they are too whacked-out. It’s one thing to be pro-gun. It’s another thing to have no common sense.”
Hopefully common sense will prevail here at the state level and keep guns out of the hands of terror suspects. I’m hopeful other states (besides NJ which passed it in 2013) will follow suit and send a message to Congress that enough is enough. Sadly, there is a dearth of grassroots organization for efforts like this so if you want this passed, please stay engaged with your elected officials (27 co-sponsors at this moment) and active on media.
…but since it is a federal list to begin with, federal law should prohibit the purchase of firearms by anyone on the list.
While I still think the principle of “Too dangerous to fly, too dangerous to buy a gun,” is a no-brainer, based on discussions on this and a couple of other threads I think we need to take a hard look at how the lists are created, using a higher standard of proof than apparently is currently used.
Appreciate it
It remain unknown how the list is compsed, and AFAIK there is no appeal or notification process.
How would you justify denying a Constitutional right – not a travel inconvenience – based on the criteria?
Next question.
He was on the No Fly list in error but that was quickly corrected when he was denied access to a flight because of who he was.
And the rest of us?
My friends are saying that Obama supports this and wants to put Lois Lerner in charge of the list. Snarky, but a real concern until the process for inclusion is a little better understood
It seems to me that not allowing those on the no-fly list to purchase or own guns has several positive aspects:
1. It helps right-wing gun fetishists pay attention to other constitutional rights besides the right to bear arms.
2. It helps those who want to expand our surveillance activities even more realize that they are putting their own “base” at risk.
3. It helps right-wing extremists and those who pander to them gain a more immediate understanding what a “false positive” is, and why they are bad.
4. It helps keep assault weapons out of the hands of those who are correctly identified as potential terrorists.
I have a hard time understanding how the same party can simultaneously call for EXPANDING the programs that add names to the watch list while objecting to blocking those on the list from getting these weapons.
…than an IRS director who turned out not to be targeting opponents of the President after all:)
But because she invoked a different Constitutional right, we likely will never know
LOL – So true! So true! LOL
Someone with the same name was. It was a clerical error that happened a long time ago and was cleared up. After it happened, the system was reformed and people are able to get themselves off it.
LOL – that’s a reach
Someone else going by the name Ted Kennedy was on the watch list. It was early days for the watch list in general. The TSA made a mistake. Reforms have been made.
They just issued a press release saying major reforms are still needed, their suit last June identified hundreds of wrongly identified people still on the list. In one case because an FBI Agent checked off the wrong box on a form. This is not a transparent agency with a record of due process and accountability capable of stripping constitutional rights from citizens. An appeals judge agreed with their suit saying it infringed on “our sacred right” to have freedom of movement. Progressives should be funding gun violence reduction efforts that are proven to work like Operation Ceasfire instead of rushing to embrace a Bush era list we rightly mocked two weeks ago.
do you want those who are on the terrorist watch list to be able to purchase guns. Yes or No.
If your liberties are to be constrained there absolutely has to be due process, the right to know the evidence against you, the right to appeal, etc.
Of course it has constitutional problems!
The no-fly list is one of the oldest and most egregious examples of the way we shredded our constitutional freedoms in the aftermath of 9/11. Our government suspended Habeas Corpus for “suspected enemy combatants” for MONTHS. Victims were held secretly, without access to legal help, with no charges, and without the ability to even tell loved ones of their “detention”.
OUR government (not East Germany, not Stalinist Russia, not Red China, not North Korea) disappeared people for months — and our GOP led the charge.
Perhaps if those on the no-fly list were not allowed to have weapons, then those who want to expand the no-fly list might pay a bit more attention to how accurate it is, how to correct errors, and so on.
.
The right isn’t being denied. All the person has to do is join a well regulated militia, and a weapon will be provided. Many like it, but one in particular for our no-fly-list friend.
How do you reconcile keep and bear arms, aka ownership, with ‘one will be provided to you’?
…and that I can find ways to interpret as keep and bear that do not mean own. If I lease a car I don’t own it, but I do keep and bear it in my garage.
If one joins a well regulated militia, be it the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard, or Reserves, and he or she will at some point be issued a firearm. At that point, the person should feel free to recite the Rifleman’s Creed.
P.S. I don’t need to reconcile “keep and bear” with ownership because those two things are most certainly not “aka.”
It’s our only amendment that is really antiquated to this century and it’s norms. The context of the time was an era when everyone owned firearms and had an obligation to muster and train with their neighbors on the common in case of Indian attack, and later, to thwart the British in our two wars of independence (1812 counts).
People tend to forget that Washington was the only President to personally lead American troops against other Americans during the Whiskey Rebellion. His presence alone was sufficient to get them to lay down their arms and surrender them to him. So if folks are worried about Obama grabbing their guns, they should also remember our first President and Founding Father personally did the same thing.
Switzerland is the only modern country that still relies on this model. It has no standing army, but requires all it’s male citizens own weapons and be proficient in them in the case of attack, in which case, their entire population is conscripted. Seeing as we have not only a standing army, a standing Navy (which anti-federalists argued wasn’t authorized in the Constitution) but we have the best in the world.
That said, it will take a generation until we get a fully liberal court again ready to interpret the amendment that way, and probably at least 10-15 years before we have a Congress and President equally committed to those values. Further empowering the relics of George W. Bush’s dumb war on Terror is probably not the way to solve this problem.
that conservatives, who to my knowledge have had no qualms about the terror watch list until now, are suddenly deeply concerned about it, now that prospect of someone on it not being able to purchase an AR-15 at the corner store has arisen. I agree that these watch lists are problematic, both because people don’t realize they’re on them, and because there seems to be no ready way of getting off them. And yet, it also seems to be eminently sound policy to keep firearms out of the hands of people who really are a terrorist threat. My proposal is that we enact the restriction, which will motivate both left and right to fix the problems with the list and also keep Americans safer in the meanwhile. Do you agree or disagree? Please state your reasons.
…we should repeal Social Security so when people are hurt both sides will fix it.
Libertarian conservatives – as opposed to the social ones which seem to be all that BMG takes notice of – have long been concerned about such lists and surveillance and how these thing are used.
Unfortunately the head of the most transparent administration in history has not seen fit to respond to inquiries except to ban the questioners
The ACLU has been filing multiple suits against the agency in charge of this list, including most recently in 2014 when an appeals judge significantly limited the scope of the list and called flying ‘a sacred right’; it is highly unlikely in the post Heller world that this bill, were it to pass, would meet constitutional muster. The system continues to have problematic issues and independent auditors have considered it a giant waste of money, kind of like the entire TSA. This agency has been riddled with controversies outlined here, feel free to follow the external links if you disbelieve the wiki summary.
I strongly support federal gun control. We should be honest on our side and push for English/Scottish style controls, since controls short of that will be completely ineffective at stopping large scale massacres or acts of domestic terrorism such as the shootings over the last week.
Throughout this issue I am reminded of Pat Moynihan’s quote:
Our gun culture is corrosive and must be modified in order to protect the public, we have to recognize and interact with this culture to understand those on the other side and bring them on board to making the substantial changes required. Sportsmen and hunters are still pretty common throughout Europe, despite the stricter controls, and have become some of the best advocates for true gun safety. We should prepare for the long fight since we are making a cultural change.
This fight will not be one by piecemail incrementalism or wave after wave of bills that will fail to pass, or be successfully challenged in court if they do. We have to change attitudes and change hearts. It will be tougher, but organizations like Operation Ceasfire have reduced gun violence by 63% in the areas it has been implemented. Drastically changing the ‘shoot first’ culture of inner city gangs. We also have to change sporting and hunting culture, and creating a moderate sportsmen advocacy group, as the NRA used to be, is a key and essential step to winning this fight.
We won’t see victory for 10-20 years, but it is worth winning. And we start that be focusing on reducing all gun violence we can through existing laws, enforcing existing laws better, empowering law enforcement and intelligence agencies to share information, and yes pushing in the long term for the only controls that would work at solving this problem once and for all.
There isn’t a notification process, but do we want the FBI to notify terrorist suspects that they’re terrorist suspects?
Nationally, there’s been about 2200 people on the FBI’s terrorist watch list who’ve bought guns over about the past ten years, which would translate to about 7 people per year in Massachusetts. This isn’t a wide-sweeping onerous bill, although certainly all it would take is 1 of those 7 people to cause widesweeping terrible loss of life.
Given all the post 9/11 restrictions that have effected hundreds of millions of us that we’ve made on society, doing little to improve our safety, this would be a bill only effecting a handful of people that could do a lot to improve our safety. Weighing the costs and benefits of this bill, it’s a no brainer.
Please show your work.
Change “Terrorist Watch List” to “Suspected Communist” list, and change “obtain firearms” to something like “Be allowed to vote”, and you will see why this is a bad idea.
We don’t know why people are put on the “Terrorist Watch List”. We have been led to believe that this list is just a bunch of Middle Eastern guys, or people who have done stuff related to terrorism. In reality, we just don’t know. We don’t know how someone gets put on the list, we don’t who puts them on the list, we don’t know how someone gets off the list.
The whole idea of using such a list for anything other than “watching” is just plain wrong. It smacks of Herbert Hoover. Yes, we have to stop the terrorists, but sacrificing privacy, liberty, and/or rights of people without due process is not the way to do this.
If someone on the terrorist watch list buys a gun, then simply watch them a bit harder. If they buy 20 guns, then by all means, do some questioning. But this bill is just stupid – the only thing it is good for is to make conservatives realize that these lists just might include them, and just might restrict them from doing something they want to do.
I meant “J. Edgar Hoover”, not Herbert. We really need an edit feature!
I agree with you.
Still, it’s the only thing we have today. I think the chances of replacing the no-fly list with something more palatable are vanishingly small today.
My own inclination, which I think is equally impossible to achieve, is to adjust our expectations to accept that a certain number of casualties from terror is a price we will pay in exchange for the freedoms and rights that form the core of our national identity.
Drunk driving kills tens of thousands of people per year, and there is no analogous hue and cry to compile secret federal “no-drive” lists.
From today’s piece:
This is largely a symbolic bill designed to make liberals feel good about taking guns away from people in red states. It is painfully obvious that the bloated TSA has done a lousy job of protecting Americans, even conservatives like Jeff Jacoby have now recognized this.
Do we really want to entrust them or the similarly bloated and ineffective Department of Homeland Security with this task? Don’t we already have another division of government that is supposed to look into Firearms (when it’s not busy accidentally running guns to drug lords or killing innocent Americans)?
Liberals should be consistent on this issue. We should soundly reject secret government lists written by agencies operating with little oversight from Congress underwritten by kangaroo courts meeting in secret. This is exactly the kind of stuff liberals have opposed since the McCarthy era. There is a real reason Ted Kennedy and Russ Finegold voted against forming the Department of Homeland Security, that is because they knew it would further erode the civil rights and civil liberties of law abiding Americans. This list has always been a joke, but an unfunny one for the many hundreds of innocent people who have ended up on them.
We should soundly stand against racial profiling, and I strongly believe this bill will lead to more, not less racial profiling of Muslim Americans. As it is, law abiding Muslim Americans are far more likely to end up on the no fly list, they will be far more likely end up on the no gun list as well. The arsenal this couple purchased was purchased lawfully, they passed every background check, and no list, short of strongly invasive tactics that profile every Muslim American as a suspected terrorist would likely have caught their activity before hand or given intelligence and law enforcement agencies the probable cause to trace their online presence or search their homes.
The arsenal this couple purchased was purchased lawfully
Changing that reality is the only way to stop this, and I actually believe we can’t do it without repealing the Second Amendment itself or waiting 10-20 years for the court, Senate, and House to change sufficiently to drive an alternative through. In the meantime, I would rather we roll back post 9/11 restrictions on civil liberties, including the Patriot Act, the TSA, the Department of Homeland Security, and Muslim profiling rather than subject a minority of our population to police state conditions.
…the folks in red states with rifles on their pickup trucks for hunting purposes are the least of my worries in this regard. I do think they should be licensed and the weapons registered, but assume most of them will have no problem complying with that, and I’d like to outright ban heavy-duty weapons you have no business hunting with.
Maybe this can be comprehensive. In the same legislation tighten up procedures for getting on to the list in the first place by establishing due process, while simultaneously expanding its use to include a ban on firearm purchases for those on the list – something for everyone.
David’s post was the best in this thread and suggested how in theory, liberals
could make this list better and conservatives can start being vocal about its flaws. And maybe we get a better policy!
I worry the opposite might happen, whereby conservatives agree to this only if terrorism is defined as “radical Islam” and liberals get on board to look tough on terror and to say they “did something” about guns. Which outcome is more likely to pass Paul Ryan’s House and get out supposed “bipartisan negotiator” Chuck Schumer’s assent through the Senate with his Republican friends? That’s what I’m worried about. When Democrats like him and Dianne Feinstein that are hostile to civil liberties and skeptical towards Muslim Americans take the lead on this bill and link it to broader gun control, as they both have. We are in a climate not unlike the hysteria after 9/11 that produced a bipartisan failed policy in Iraq. That’s why we should be on guard about or civil liberties rather than rushing to embrace broader government powers.
I agree with this comment.
In your last sentence, my hope is that we can somehow find a way to replace your last sentence with something like the following:
Just so you know, the “Assault weapons” that is mostly used fires the .223 cartridge (occasionally the 7mm), this is considerably smaller than most hunting rifles.
Rifles like the “Assault Weapon” S&W MP15 are often used for small game hunting, but are generaly not thought to be big enough to hunt larger game.
Liberals have been derelict in their duty tor the entirety of this administration when it comes to the drone war, kill lists, and have displayed unbridled enthusiasm for whenever Obama uses executive orders and signing statements to get his way.
Remember when we were against those things? Remember when Sen. Sanders rightly called out the Import-Export bank as corporate pork? Remember when Sen. Kennedy eloquently used his own case of mistaken identity to argue against arbitrary government lists written without due process or the rule of law? Remember when he and Finegold waged a lowly battle against the Department of Homeland Security? When the latter was the only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act? I do. The ACLU was rightly suing this agency a year ago and won a massive class action settlement. And we honestly want to embrace it for a cheap score and easy win in the gun politics stalemate?
Bob Neer is openly calling everyone on this list a terrorist and saying you are either for arming the terrorist or against national security. Where’s his mission accomplished banner to go along with such irresponsible rhetoric?
…but I also HAVE seen concern expressed by liberals over what this President has done. Doing due diligence to make sure the list is correct and using it to ban firearm access are not mutually exclusive. I think there is also a desire to beat the GOP at their own game. They would not and do not hesitate to imply that not going along with them means siding with the terrorists. I think on balance Bob is correct.
After Sandy Hook and other attacks when I was angry. And let’s be clear, these are terrorists all of them committing these acts. No difference between Root, Dear the ISIL couple. That said, I do think there are legitimate civil liberties questions that the opposition to this bill is bringing up that shouldn’t be dismissed as “siding with the terrorists”.
The ACLU says “major reforms” have to happen to the list before it could be used in this way. Right now it’s a list that has ruined hundreds of innocent lives, folks unable to get off of it and in some cases unable to access credit or employment opportunities let alone a flight. So we should be very wary of expanding this rashly without fixing what’s wrong.
Are there actual stats on mistakes or is this speculation. Ryan above seems to think there is a relative handful and there is an appeals process.
The government refuses to tell you if you’re ok the list, places the burden on you to prove you deserve to be off of it with a complex process that can take up to ten years, there is fundamentally no due process for determining who is on and how to get off. Many innocent Muslims and some army veterans have been targeted. If an appeals court has held the federal government was denying a constitutional right with the no fly list, presumably, other courts will uphold the same rights for gun ownership. Bob Neer is absolutely wrong to call everyone on this list a terrorist, the real problem is we have no idea who these people are or what they’ve done. And they have no way of getting off of it. Via the ACLU website.
I suspect the “appeals process” is approximately as effective as the “Mass Save Energy Rebate” that I was allegedly eligible for (the one announced with great fanfare and chest-thumping from own energy-conscious fellow Democrats) after I replaced my asbestos-covered “Iron Snowman” steam boiler with a very high-efficiency hot-water boiler.
The reality of that rebate was that applications had to be received by some deadline (I think the end of October, but it didn’t matter since it was impossible to acquire the application), and required an energy audit or something analogous. When I attempted to even ACQUIRE the paperwork, the website did not work, the phone was not answered (I’m talking about 90 minute hold times), and repeated voicemails were not returned. Many URLS, many promotional spots, and all ultimately leading to the same failed phone number and broken URL. Lots and lots of self-serving publicity, and a rebate that COULD NOT BE CLAIMED. Sort of like the unemployment system. Sort of like the health care website.
This government is much better at crowing about what it says it does than it is actually DOING anything.
I don’t doubt that somebody somewhere claims that it’s possible to get off the no-fly list. I think it’s probably no less difficult than getting my energy rebate.
We all share the same end: less guns in the hands of would be terrorists and murderers. But if the means to that end requires a mechanism which is understood by few who operate it, the hundreds that are accidentally on it, and the appeals judge trying who couldn’t make sense of it-it’s probably not the best means for achieving this end.