The 'No Fly List' is Atrocious - Let's Not Make it Worse

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It would pretty much be all of us...

Start with an almost comically obvious premise: It would not be good to simply let terrorists buy guns legally. No rational society would allow such a thing - setting aside for a moment whether any rational society would allow broad unlimited access to modern firearms in the first place - and it shouldn't be terribly difficult to make certain such an obvious premise is enforced in day-to-day reality. Of course, we're not really saying what we mean here - if we know a specific individual is a terrorist, they are either in custody or the subject of a manhunt. Obviously what we mean here is 'suspected terrorist', or perhaps a better construct might be 'pre-terrorist', somebody who has come to the attention of law enforcement or Homeland Security but has not been arrested or tried for any crimes. And fortuitously, we have a 'list' of these exact subjects - it's called the 'No Fly List' and it is used to prevent terrorism suspects from boarding or traveling on commercial airliners.

The No Fly List contains about 47,000 names. It's unclear how many are American citizens or permanent residents, but that number is well under 1000 (it was 800 in 2013). Much of the actual intent of maintaining a No Fly List is to keep suspected international terrorists out of the US in the first place. So as a No Gun List, this compilation of names would be very close to useless, another case of 'security theater' writ large. But let me ask you a question: In light of what we know about the US National Security State, given this kind of new unilateral administrative authority to prevent gun purchases, do you think it's at least reasonable that the FBI might expand the scope of people on the No Fly List to more broadly include people in the US and people whose focus isn't necessarily on transportation targets?

And once we have surrendered yet another constitutional right to the whims of the DoJ bureaucracy, are you comfortable that it will all just stop there? What about Drivers Licenses? I mean, cars are little different from airplanes and truck bombs are the most common form of terrorist attack around the globe. And consider the attack on the soccer stadium in Paris. Perhaps the FBI should be able to deny the right to attend large-scale sporting events and concerts?

When you give up your due process rights and allow a government agency to determine whether and how to withhold rights and privileges you take for granted as a citizen - when you allow lists of names to be compiled by agency bureaucrats who can then restrict the rights of those on the list - you give up both any access to information about WHY your name is on that list, and you give up any opportunity to challenge that information, and have that challenge adjudicated fairly.  We've seen these excesses in the No Fly List from the very beginning. So much secrecy and ambiguity exists around the list that people have been denied access to airlines for years because their name was 'similar to the known alias of someone on the No Fly List'. Even after it was established that it was a different person on the list, it was still impossible for the unfortunately named individual to fly.

Look. Guns in America are a crisis. No one spends more time screaming about the gun violence crisis than I do. But children: THIS IS NOT THE WAY. If we're so desperate for a 'win' in the gun debate that we're willing to hand over another victory to the National Security State, then we've already lost the much larger debate. At the very moment when we should be fighting to radically reform or eliminate the No Fly List, instead we find ourselves enthusiastically doubling down on the premise of a society where our 'rights' are limited and controlled by government agencies.

Update: Just want to make sure we're thinking about this. This is what you get when you have a constitutional guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms. You can clearly have an American citizen who is the subject of multiple investigations, who has indicated a tendency to hate, violence and terror. But he's not chargeable, so he can walk into a gun store and buy a pistol, a rifle or a shotgun. This shouldn't be hard - no other country struggles with this challenge. But our toxic 2nd amendment saddles us with these horrific hobson's choices...
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