Potential Watch List Fix

Just a thought…

After the Islamic terrorist attack in Oralando last week, folks everywhere totally lost their minds.  People were screaming and crying and beating their chests, while many were willingly volunteering to throw their 2nd and 5th amendment rights to the wind.  While I think we can ALL agree that we do not want terrorists having free access to guns, but how we go about preventing that has turned into total a mess.

On one hand, we have the Democrats and many anti-gun organizations screaming that merely being on the terror watch list should disqualify you from purchasing a gun.  Not surprisingly, those folks, the very same folks who don’t want us to have guns anyway, seem not to have any concerns about that whole silly Bill of Rights thing.  The problem with their suggestion is that not only does it violate the 2nd amendment, but preventing someone from purchasing a gun, but it does so while also violating the 5th amendment, which clearly states that your rights cannot be removed without the Due Process of Law.  In other words, a court hearing.

Dana Loesch  does a pretty good job covering the logical opposition to that in this short, 3 minute long video.

But, we are still stuck with the current system which does not prevent suspected bad guys from buying guns, so what do we do?  Well, senate republicans offered an option, one that was even backed by the NRA,  which was promptly voted down in the US Senate yesterday.

“Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas pushed a measure that would allow the government to delay a gun sale to a suspected terrorist for 72 hours, but require prosecutors to go to court to show probable cause to block the sale permanently. The National Rifle Associated backed the legislation, but it failed in a final vote of 53 to 47.”

While I appreciate the Republican’s attempt at addressing both parts of the problem, I think anyone who is familiar enough with the court system might agree with me that expecting an incident to go from 1) refused gun sale based on watch list status to 2) court hearing to permanently deny those rights in a time frame of 72 hours is absolutely insane.  Just getting a case scheduled in that short of a time frame would be tough, let alone actually having enough time to build a case to present to a judge.  I like the idea, but the time frame I think is totally unreasonable.  Also, the denied purchase would notify the potential terrorist that something was up and might cause them to proceed a different route for purchasing their weapons.

A Possible Solution
If I may, I’d like to offer yet another plausible option, one that weighs both the public safety and the bill of rights, and does not violate either.  Here is a crazy idea, but why not make a slight change to the back end of the NICS system that would automatically notify the FBI that someone on their terror watch list just submitted a form 4473 to purchase a gun. If that person is truly on the FBI watch list, then the feds should have a general idea where that person is living and a notification like this could initiate some surveillance and further scrutiny.  Hell, it might even give them enough probable cause to quickly scratch out a warrant for a wiretap.  All of this would happen behind the scenes and the potential terrorist would be none the wiser, thus allowing the FBI to not only prevent another attack, but also to build a better case that allows them to get another terrorist POS off our streets.

Thoughts?  Suggestions? Concerns?

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UPDATE:  Well, would you look at that?  It appears what I suggested is actually pretty close to what already happens, yet that fact is being ignored by, well, just about EVERYONE.  Here is what the FBI told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs way back in 2010, LONG before Orlando or San Bernardino…

I was thinking my solution was so simple that I was having a hard time imagining no one had thought of it yet.

Now, stepping back a bit, since my suggestion is essentially already the protocol, yet the left is so loudly clamoring for more legislation, I can only assume one other logical reason that they are pushing so hard for this “gun purchase prevention absent due process” scheme, but it requires installation of my tin foil hat…

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