X-Post: "Gun Rights for Terrorists" [View all]

[Nuclear Unicorn]

Gun Rights for Terrorists

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/opinion/gun-rights-for-terrorists.html

"Protective measures include the tracking of travel patterns to and from certain countries, and tightened airport security, but our laws do nothing to stop domestic terrorist suspects from gaining access to the tools they need to inflict terrible damage. Those on the terror watch list are free to buy and own unlimited firearms in the United States.

And it is well documented that they do. The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, recently reported that between February 2004 and December 2014, individuals on the watch list attempted to purchase firearms or explosives on 2,233 occasions — and more than 90 percent of the time, they cleared a background check and received approval to buy.

In fact, only a very small percentage of the roughly one million people on the international terror watch list are American citizens. Among the objective criteria that cause someone to be listed are active membership in an organization devoted to jihad, a record of transfers of money to a terrorist organization, and the incitement of acts of terrorism.

Gun lobby opposition has also played a part in earlier failures to address the problem. A small, extremist sliver of the gun-owning population (including the leadership of the National Rifle Association) opposes any limitations — even a restriction of terror suspects’ right to arm themselves."

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Yep, law abiding citizens all.



http://www.democraticunderground.com/12628345

Apparently the child in the picture is a jihadist that has traveled to numerous foreign lands and poses a terrorist threat.

No discussion as to whether of not the one million people on the watch list deserve to be there; just an assumption that they are guilty and therefore should be stripped of their civil rights without due process. If it were a RWer making this argument people would be howling that this was nothing more than an effort to stir-up Islamophobia and they would be right.

Yet, here we are, being fed the guilty-Muslim-until-proven-innocent line and, moreover, we're being told that in order to combat this nefarious evil lurking in the shadows we must restrict the rights of all people -- even those who never travel to nations on the watch list.

Of course, one has to also wonder: What good would even a total prohibition do if someone is prepared to engage in an act of war on US soil? Have terrorists, of any stripe, been thwarted in their ability to gain the weapons of their choosing whether guns, bombs or carpet razors?