Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr says he’s “skeptical” of a compromise gun control measure offered by one of his colleagues in an attempt to resolve a debate about how to keep terror suspects from obtaining weapons.
“I am skeptical as to whether it meets what I think [is] the due process [threshold],” the North Carolina Republican told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday after attending a GOP conference lunch in which he was briefed on the proposal.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, led the bipartisan negotiation to ban weapons sales to individuals whose names appear on the no-fly list and the lesser-known selectee list, a federal database that requires extra scrutiny for certain people before they board airplanes. That’s a narrower proposal than the one Democrats demanded last week, which would have banned sales to anyone whose name appears on one of 11 different databases encompassing almost one million people.
“Essentially, we believe if you are too dangerous to fly on an airplane, you are too dangerous to buy a gun,” Collins said at a press conference following the briefing.
The broader Democratic effort failed because Republicans objected to using secret lists without judicial oversight to ban gun sales, especially given the history of innocent people being included in those databases. Collins’ proposal, which follows a classified FBI briefing on the criteria for being included on the no-fly list, sidesteps some of those objections by focusing on the smaller no-fly database. She tries to defuse the due process fight by giving anyone whose name appears on the list the option of appealing to a federal court to be removed from the list.
“The [attorney general] would have the burden of proof, and the court would be required to make a decision in 14 days,” the summary of her bill explains.
Burr isn’t sure that’s good enough to “meet the threshold that I think due process needs to happen,” although he hasn’t made a final decision. His potential opposition is significant, given his post as the top Republican on the intelligence panel and as an incumbent running for re-election in a competitive state.
“Even before my responsibilities as a committee chairman, I’ve got a responsibility to the Constitution,” he said. “That’s how I look at this: Does this in any way, shape or form negate one’s constitutional rights under the Second Amendment, and, I might add, the Fifth Amendment, which [guarantees] due process.”
