The Big Question: Does the U.S. need a terror watch list gun ban?

David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and
Homeland Security, sai
It is difficult to conceive of a reason why individuals who have raised
sufficient level of suspicion to put them on the no-fly list should have
an unlimited right to buy a firearms and explosives.  The right to
travel and the right to bear arms are both are constitutionally
protected, but far from absolute. 

John M. Snyder, Public Affairs Director of Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said:

While promoters of this idea agree with legislation enabling the Attorney General in this regard, they generally fail to inform the public about the nature of the list itself.
 
To a large extent, the list is a mystery.  There really has not been a lot of information revealed about it.  Who is on it?  Why?  Who puts one on it?  How does one get his or her name placed on it?  How does one get off it?  Can a government official place on it the names of men and women considered unfriendly to or unsupportive of the government official?  Can a journalist or anyone considered unfriendly to or unsupportive of a government official or policy be placed on it?  Can this happen without the subject’s knowledge?
 
Specifically, could anyone who supports the individual Second Amendment civil right to keep and bear arms be placed on it?  Could one who is completing his or her military service, considered suspect last year in a Department of Homeland Security assessment document, be placed on it?  Could one who supports, or opposes, any legislative program be placed on it?
 
It seems that efforts to expand the list would enable the Attorney General or other government officials to include names based not on genuine evidence of criminal activity, but rather on a subjective determination that a person is suspected of engaging in some manner of assisting or preparing for such acts.
 
The current question should open up to general scrutiny the watch list itself.  As it exists now, its potential for public abuse is incalculable.  It is reminiscent of a star chamber.  Its current and contemplated manifestation is absolutely contrary to our American tradition of civil liberty, regardless of the particular issue up for debate.
 
Rather than give the Attorney General or anyone else the prerogative of placing the names of gun owners or anyone he wants on the watch list, what Congress really should do is examine the watch list itself.
 

Justin Raimondo,
editorial director of Antiwar.com, said:
Since we’re dispensing with legal procedures here, entirely, why not go all the way and just jail everyone who is on the “watch list”? We don’t need evidence of a crime. Mayor Bloomberg, Senator Lieberman, and Rep. Peter King urge us not to bother with such archaic, pre-9/11 concepts: Let’s just strip everyone on the “watch list” of all of their constitutional rights, and be done with it!

This process by which the Constitution is being neutered, by both the right and the “left,” is quite interesting: “Liberals” like Bloomberg target the 2nd Amendment, whilst neocons like Lieberman and the Murdoch media empire get down to business eviscerating habeas corpus and hundreds of years of Common Law. Now that’s what I call an intellectual division of labor. Very efficient, and it might even work.

Bernie Quigley, Pundits Blog Contributor, said:
Of course they should be blocked. Common sense. If Constitutional rights become a fetish; that is, if they lose proportionality to the existential situation, it becomes false secular religion. A kind of secular idolatry or Constitutional cultism. And there is a lot of it going around. The issue first is safety for citizens.

Alan Abramowitz, professor of political science at Emory University, said:
Yes! Obviously. Let them appeal if they believe they’re being wrongly targeted. It’s amazing to me that some conservatives are willing to take away Miranda rights from terrorist suspects, but not their right to buy a gun.

John F. McManus, president of The John Birch Society, said:

Enacting a law designed to prevent individuals named on a terrorism watch list from buying firearms brings to mind the sometimes ridiculed but poignantly apt bumper strip: “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”  No federal law will deter a criminal from acquiring weapons – or from acquiring explosives although gaining explosives might be a bit more difficult.
 
The same holds true for those named on a terrorism watch list.

Hal Lewis, professor of Physics at UC Santa Barbara, said:

Nobody is actually blocked from buying firearms and ammunition, though a few people are forced into the illicit market. Leaving aside the question of whether people who are simply under suspicion (and that’s what the watch list is) should have any burden because of it, this proposal (which I have not heard before) is simply a feel-good-because-we-are-doing-something item. I will admit a bias: I think any citizen without a criminal conviction ought to be free to both buy and carry firearms. Just as it says clearly in the Constitution. We’d all be safer in the long run.

Joe Madison, host of The Black Eagle radio show, said:

If you can’t fly as a terrorist why should a terrorist be legally allowed to fire a gun? Duh!

Damon N. Spiegel, entrepreneur and writer, said:

Blocking people on the terrorism watch list will simply push them to
acquire their weapons on the black-market and make it even more
difficult for our security agencies to watch them. We should allow them
to continue to buy their arms, but implement a national database across
all firearms distributors that will notify the FBI upon purchase. This
will give us an opportunity to closely monitor them and their intentions
before they try to go underground.