BELLEVUE, WA – Pending legislation that would prohibit people whose names are placed on a “no-fly” list from purchasing firearms would result in a “civil rights nightmare,” the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.
CBS News reported this morning that Capitol Hill Democrats are calling for a vote on the legislation.
“Without proper protections for people to find out if they are put on the no fly list and a quick way to get off of it if wrongly put on it, we cannot support it,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “As currently written, it is a civil rights nightmare. It is an anti-Second Amendment bureaucrat’s dream come true. There are thousands of people wrongly on the no fly list that would lose their Second Amendment rights. President Obama and Hillary Clinton and the gun prohibition lobby that supports their anti-rights agenda cannot be trusted with this kind of power.”
Gottlieb recalled that the late Sen. Edward Kennedy was once stopped from boarding an airplane. Kennedy’s dilemma was quickly resolved, but that likely would not be the case for an average citizen who suddenly finds his or her name on the list, without knowing why or how to get their name removed.
“If lawmakers can come up with a proposal that includes an ironclad mechanism for swift resolution of mistakes,” Gottlieb said, “we would be willing to take a serious look at it. But it would have to zealously protect against civil rights violations, and there must be guarantees of due process, and the process should not cost honest citizens a penny.
“Nobody wants terrorists to get their hands on firearms,” he stressed. “If someone on a terror watch list tries to buy a firearm, it needs to trigger an immediate investigation by the FBI. Preventing such transactions is in everyone’s best interests, but playing politics with civil rights is not.”
