Hell, why bother giving the on going track record of the Air Marshals with leaving their fully loaded guns all over the place…including on actual planes. I mean, they are freaking under investigation for running a scheme to illegally ship and sale guns.
No it doesn’t. It never becomes actionable until the person tries to purchase a firearm so there would be no standing until harm is done in which case it is actionable in the courts under the proposed bill. You keep repeating the same-upside down “logic” which is simply not present. Despite the hand waving of Greenwald and the ACLU as to presumption of innocent in the court.
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And under this bill you have your day in court when you try to buy a firearm. The boarding of a plane is not a right protected under the law.
The ACLU is doing exactly what they’re supposed to do. Unfortunately.
Now, I’ve been committed to a mental hospital. I can’t buy a gun, even though I am guilty of no crime. That’s fine, I don’t want one, and I would agree with the policy that prevents me even if I did. But that, too, is extrajudicial. That weakens the argument for “due process,” doesn’t it? Countless people have been deprived of this right without ever setting foot in a court.
Generally a person is committed when doctor determines that they pose a substantial risk of danger to themselves or others. This is a good reason to bar someone from purchasing a gun. But when the danger subsides–as determined by a doctor–they are released. They are cleared as safe enough for society, but are still denied what is supposedly a right.
Either we follow due process, or we prevent as many people from buying guns as we legally can. It’s long past time that gun ownership became a privilege, like literally everything else in society is. And it’s long past time that military weapons were banned outright.
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So everyone has a right to drive a motor vehicle. (rolls eyes)
Again, you make the NRA argument. Had the FBI known that he was buying an assault rifle they could have been alerted, reviewed and denied. You cannot have it both ways. Either you are a civil liberties purist or you accept that sometimes the safety of American citizens means regulation.
Arguably, it is. It most certainly runs afoul of interstate commerce protections, that have been applied if far less demonstrable incidents with no qualms by the Court.
Keep in mind, that not 2 decades ago, the individual right to bear arms wasn’t protected by the Constitution, either. But Interstate Commerce was most definitely.
False dichotomy. Please stop doing this. I have never said that firearms shouldn’t be regulated. I just don’t know where you’re getting this idea.
There is no reason why we can’t have effective regulation of firearms, but do it in a legally-defensible, Constitutional way. We can get military grade weapons out of the hands of private citizens without violating anyone’s civil liberties. We don’t have to choose one or the other.
Let’s be practical and honest here. There’s no way to get that genie back in the bottle. The arms that are out there are out there, and there isn’t going to be a wholesale surrender or confiscation of these weapons, We can really only stop the sale of them to normal civilians.
Yes, at this point, given the intransigence of congress, we do have to choose one or the other. It has to start somewhere. Right now, regardless of the due process argument, we cannot even get congress to vote on preventing folks on the terror watchlist from buying guns. The provision in place would allow anyone denied to appeal. If the ACLU has a problem with the watchlist then they should fight to change that. But so long as it exists, it should be used as a tool, whether it applies to any recent mass slaughter or not. Purity and absolutes have no place in democracy. The ACLU says if you stop someone from buying a gun then next you take away other liberties. The NRA says if you stop someone from buying a gun then next you outlaw guns and confiscate in order to subjugate. Neither argument moves the issue forward.
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Australia has done a pretty good job of getting the genie back in the bottle. It didn’t happen overnight, but the results have been impressive.
Granted, the “deep in the bunker” nutjobs are going to be unreachable. But if it’s a felony to sell or give such a weapon to anyone else, and if we redirected LEO’s from making drug buys to making AR-15 buys, that would go a long way. And certainly no one would be able to hang around the Walmart parking lot with an AR-15 slung over his shoulder. We see you carrying one, we can arrest you immediately, instead of waiting to see whether or not you’re going to use it. And oh, by the way, possession is a felony, and this is your cellmate.
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How so?
What rulings hold that it is?
And by what argument?
If you can claim a right fro board a plane is a Constitutional one, you can likewise claim driving a motor vehicle is a Constitutional one. And I doubt very seriously any SCOTUS will back that argument at all, and there is plenty of precedence to argue against it.
Australia did it. It just takes the political will and changes in the law.
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Never say never. The administrative hurdles for the lists make the assault weapons ban a reasonable alternative. Sen Feinstein clearly indicated the NRA hold on congress was the reason for no ban. So, with the world watching, Democrats highly motivated, election year, help from MSM, social media, and 80%+ Americans wanting it, I think it is possible. Hope springs eternal. We’ve faced bigger hurdles.
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Thank goodness!
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Boynton v. Virginia, 1952…held that racial segregation at BUS TERMINALS violated the Interstate Commerce Act.
“Without regard to contracts, if the bus carrier has volunteered to make terminal and restaurant facilities and services available to its interstate passengers as a regular part of their transportation, and the terminal and restaurant have acquiesced and cooperated in this undertaking, the terminal and restaurant must perform these services without discriminations prohibited by the Act. In the performance of these services under such conditions the terminal and restaurant stand in place of the bus company in the performance of its transportation obligations.”
You can almost replace bus carrier with airplane and get to the same point.
The significance of Boynton was not in its holding since it managed to avoid deciding any Constitutional questions in its decision, and its expansive reading of Federal powers regarding interstate commerce was also well established by the time of the decision.
Precisely. So its an easy lift to say that burdening people from flying by putting them on a no fly list without any sort of public hearing would also be in violation of the Interstate Commerce Powers. You are literally restricting people from travelling interstate and out of the country, which invariably, is going to include people conducting business. Hell, the airlines have sold them a ticket…so clearly commerce is involved.
Except those powers within the Commerce Act were statutory laws about desegregation, and the case did not reach any Constitutional question.
Oh good grief. Where do you think the Interstate Commerce Clause is?
Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution:
[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
That is where that decision is derived, where VAST amounts of constitutional law is derived.
So to argue that its not a Constitutional question when the Constitution is used as the basis for the decision? C’mon man…don’t go there.