Constitutional Erosion

I wrote this several years ago, but it is still relevant, sadly. Just this past year, a similar bill failed to get out of the House - The Terrorist Firearms Prevention Act, which would prevent people on often-arbitrary no-fly lists from purchasing a firearm. With the recent New Zealand gun grab after that blatantly phoney shooting (should have called Peter Jackson to come back for that one) or Trump's Feb 2018 statement in support of a weapons ban (take the guns first, due process second), Americans need to resist these gun-grabbing attempts all the more fiercely.

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In the spirit of never letting a crisis go to waste, Democrats in Congress, President Obama, and now Hillary Clinton are once again calling for people named on the terror watch list to automatically be forbidden from purchasing firearms. They tried this last year as well, and failed. "Who could possibly object to such a measure?" they ask.

Well, let's see. The right of an individual to keep and bear arms is guaranteed by the Constitution. The court has affirmed this, and reaffirmed this, and re-reaffirmed this. That right can be revoked on an individual basis, but only as a due process measure. You'd have to first be tried and convicted of a crime. What these politicians are proposing is suspending a constitutional right without any due process. This proposal should be chilling to anyone who spends 10 seconds tracing the ramifications.

The terror watch list is not adjudicated. There's no judge granting approval for a name to be added to the list. Instead, names are added by unaccountable bureaucrats in the executive branch. The list is known to contain errors. Individuals added to the list have no means of appealing their presence on the list should they ever even find out they're on it.

So maybe you don't like guns. Replace the right to keep and bear arms with any other constitutionally guaranteed right. You have been accused of no crime, much less been tried, but your name is added in secret to a list, you can't get it off of the list, and because it's on that list, you are prevented from exercising your right to free speech. Or to peaceably assemble. Or to practice your religion. Or to vote. Or any other freedom guaranteed under the Constitution. Would you maybe see that as a problem? It's all the same, a constitutional right is a constitutional right.