How Out of Touch Are Democrats on Gun Rights?

 

…Or rights in general, for that matter? They’ve lost the support of writers from Slate, Vox, and Gawker. That’s how out of touch they are.

Mark Joseph Stern, writing in Slate:

What Congress, or the next president, should not do, however, is forbid individuals on the FBI’s terrorist watch list from purchasing firearms. The problem here is largely one of precedent: The Supreme Court has said private gun ownership is protected by the Second Amendment of the Constitution. It has also ruled that the right to bear arms is a “fundamental right” under the 14th Amendment as a component of the “liberty” protected by the due process clause.

Dara Lind, writing in Vox:

Whenever the war on terror meets gun control politics, the terms of the debate shift: Democrats and gun control advocates tend to believe that the threat is dire enough that it’s worth a little collateral damage to civil liberties, while Republicans don’t. In part, that’s because people who support gun control aren’t exactly worried about gun control policies being applied overbroadly: If the proposal keeps more guns off the streets than it’s supposed to, that suits them just fine.

What you need to remember, though, is that this isn’t a separate system getting created for gun control — it’s giving more power to the existing surveillance system. That surveillance system has shifted over time depending on what it’s being used for, and giving it the power to ban gun sales would probably lead it to evolve again.

Alex Parenne, in Gawker:

The no-fly list is a civil rights disaster by every conceivable standard. It is secret, it disproportionately affects Arab-Americans, it is error-prone, there is no due process or effective recourse for people placed on the list, and it constantly and relentlessly expands. As of 2014, the government had a master watchlist of 680,000 people, forty percent of whom had “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” This is both an absurdly large number of people to arbitrarily target in gun control legislation, and far, far too few to have any meaningful effect on actual gun ownership, let alone gun violence.

Of course, this being Vox, Slate, and Gawker, their objections are couched in terms of asking for more laws on the law-abiding, rather that proposing ideas which would actually limit the use of guns by criminals in this country, but hey, it’s a start. If Congressional Democrats want to believe that this is the hill on which they should make a stand, I say, by all means, let them stand. To borrow from Napoleon, never interfere with your enemy when they’re in the process of destroying themselves.

Published in Culture, Elections, Entertainment, Guns, Law, Politics
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  1. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    Heck yeah!

    • #1
  2. Skyler Coolidge
    Skyler
    @Skyler

    I don’t think there is any doubt remaining.  After obamacare was crammed on us.  They simply don’t care what people think. They seek power and do not associate that power’s source with the people.  They want to get a law and once enacted they expect it to be permanent. Because republicans never take back their laws, they just pretend to slow down the rate of passing them.

    We are done.  I have little hope for another generation after this one.

    • #2
  3. Mendel Inactive
    Mendel
    @Mendel

    Kevin, I think you’re leaving out a key piece of information: the Do Not Fly list-gun ban is the Republican proposal: first floated by Trump, introduced into the Senate by Susan Collins.

    Liberals aren’t being hypocritical by criticizing this plan, because it’s not their plan: their plan, naturally, is for much broader bans on guns than just the no fly list. But on this one, they’ve hit the broken clock being right twice a day button.

    • #3
  4. Kevin Creighton Contributor
    Kevin Creighton
    @KevinCreighton

    Mendel:Kevin, I think you’re leaving out a key piece of information: the Do Not Fly list-gun ban is the Republican proposal: first floated by Trump, introduced into the Senate by Susan Collins.

    Liberals aren’t being hypocritical by criticizing this plan, because it’s not their plan: their plan, naturally, is for much broader bans on guns than just the no fly list. But on this one, they’ve hit the broken clock being right twice a day button.

    I’ll blame Trump for a lot of things, but the no-fly, no-buy idea was first floated after the horror in San Bernardino.

    • #4
  5. Mendel Inactive
    Mendel
    @Mendel

    Kevin Creighton:

    Mendel:Kevin, I think you’re leaving out a key piece of information: the Do Not Fly list-gun ban is the Republican proposal: first floated by Trump, introduced into the Senate by Susan Collins.

    Liberals aren’t being hypocritical by criticizing this plan, because it’s not their plan: their plan, naturally, is for much broader bans on guns than just the no fly list. But on this one, they’ve hit the broken clock being right twice a day button.

    I’ll blame Trump for a lot of things, but the no-fly, no-buy idea was first floated after the horror in San Bernardino.

    Fair enough. For me, his toying with the idea last week was still a big blemish.

    I get the sense that this is the modern-day equivalent to the Republican alternative health care proposal back during the Clinton administration: a half-cocked attempt to put something on the table in response to Democrat initiatives and public pressure.

    • #5
  6. EHerring Coolidge
    EHerring
    @EHerring

    Do the Democrats want to own a Constitutional crisis?

    • #6
  7. The King Prawn Inactive
    The King Prawn
    @TheKingPrawn

    I hear they lost the ACLU on this as well.

    • #7
  8. EHerring Coolidge
    EHerring
    @EHerring

    Democrats hate guns because seeing videos of 7 year old girls shooting the same gun that makes them pee their pants invalidates their manhood.

    • #8
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