Friday, May 07, 2010
Careful What You Wish For...
... You just might get it.
Ths whole "He's on on the 'No-Fly' List, but can still buy a gun" meme, and Legislative freak-out needs to stop, and stop sooner than later.
Y'all know as well as me that thousands of the names on the Terror and No-Fly Lists are there for no reason at all, but for coincidence, typo, or FReepy Wingnut mischief and paranoia. It's easier and cheaper to leave the list as-is, instead of going through each name, doing the proper investigation, and then editing the list. Too many were added early-on, in those perverted Ashcroft years.
Blue Girl says it for me:
via They Gave Us A Republic
Denying firearms purchases to people on the no-fly list is a terrible idea, because two wrongs do not make a right, and the "No Fly" list is, to my lights, an offesnsive and unconstitutional apostasy.
I am more than the resident gun nut around here, which is defined as a person who owns way more guns than they need, but not nearly as many as they want. I was also one of the civil libertarians yelling the loudest whe the "No Fly' list was rolled out, and I have not budged off that position.
It is, by most estimates, over a million names long, and there is no way in hell that there are that many terrorists in the entire freakin' world. I would doubt that there are even a tenth that many real terrorists in the entire world, if you added up all the nutcases from every fundamentalist freakshow on the planet, who are willing to die and kill innocents for an ideology.
Not only that, once your name is on their unconsgtitutional enemies list, there is no getting off of it. Remember all the trouble Senator Kennedy used to have at the airport after we trashed our first amendment right to freely associate? Or how about eight-year-old Mikey Hicks? He is no-fly listed, can't get off of it and isn't even old enough to exercise his Second Amendment right to purchase a firearm. Maybe he will never want one, but maybe he will. Adopting Lautenberg's ridiculous rule now would deny him his right to own a firearm for hunting, forevermore.
When they start picking away at the amendments that comprise our Bill of Rights, I get my hackles up right quick and get real fucking protective - mama bear protective - of that Second one.
An abrogation of the Constitution is still an abrogation of the Constitution, even when it achieves an end that one finds desireable; 'tis a fair-weather civil libertarian indeed who will take such an offense in stride just because they don't like the thing the abrogation is aimed at.
Instead of trashing the Constitution twice, hows about we do some common sense things that will actually make us safer, instead of more posturing and hyperbole that does nothing to make us safer, but merely sounds good in theory.
Instead of sound-bite posturing, how about some of our elected officials start showing some political courage and taking on the NRA and proposing some common-sense gun laws?
Yes, you read that right. I am an admitted firearms fanatic and I am also in favor of regulating guns.
More at the link.
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Labels: Bad Legislation, Liberals With Guns, No-Fly Lists, War On Terror n'Shit
