Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said Thursday that due process is one of the “big problems” standing in the way of lawmakers passing legislation that would keep suspected terrorists from purchasing firearms, and argued that the Fifth Amendment is “killing us right now.”
“The problem we have, and really the firewall we have right now, is due process. It’s all due process,” he said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“We can all say we want the same thing,” he continued, “but how do we get there?”
Gun control proponents are backing legislation that would bar persons who appear on the government’s terrorist watch list, a secretive database established in 2003 under the Bush administration, from purchasing a firearm. Opponents of the proposal argue it violates the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which requires “due process of law,” and says no one can be held to answer for a crime “unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury.”
Manchin continued, turning his attention to 29-year-old Omar Mateen, who shot and killed 49 people this weekend at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., as an example of someone who slipped through the cracks.
Mateen was armed with a handgun and a Sig Sauer MCX rifle, which fires a 5.56 NATO round.
“[The FBI] did everything they could. The FBI did everything they were supposed to do, but there was no way for them to keep him on the nix list, or keep him off the gun buy list,” Manchin said. “There was no way to do that. So can’t we say that if a person is under suspicion, there should be a five-year period of time that we have to see if good behavior, if this person continues the same traits, maybe we can come to that type of agreement.”
“But due process is what’s killing us right now,” he added.
