Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn on Thursday derided proposals to restrict gun sales to people suspected of terrorist activity as “un-American,” since Hillary Clinton and Democratic lawmakers seem to be opposing having a judge oversee the cases.
“Observing constitutional rights for American citizens is not a smokescreen,” Cornyn told reporters Thursday afternoon. “That’s an incredibly ignorant thing for her to say, that anybody can be denied their constitutional rights without due process of law, without the government coming forward and establishing due process of law. That’s simply un-American.”
Cornyn targeted Clinton’s campaign with the remark, but his statement came immediately following a press conference hosted by Democratic senators and victims of gun violence. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader-in-waiting, accused Republicans of trying to appease gun rights activists by offering proposals that wouldn’t prevent potential terrorists from buying weapons.
Republicans and Democrats are negotiating to see which gun-related amendments will receive a vote during the debate over the appropriations bill that funds the Justice Department. Cornyn expects a pair of Democratic amendments — one that bans gun sales to individuals flagged by law enforcement as potential terrorists, another that would expand background checks — to receive votes alongside GOP counter proposals.
“Instead of saying they’re against it, they come up with these proposals that are wolves in sheep’s clothing,” Schumer said Thursday.
Republicans oppose using the no-fly list and other databases as the basis for banning gun sales because it creates the likelihood that innocent people who have been investigated, but never charged or convicted of a crime, will be deprived of their constitutional rights. The debate has caused a role reversal from the George W. Bush era, when Democrats denounced secret national security lists as a danger to civil liberties.
“You know what the Republican proposal, Cornyn’s proposal says?” Schumer asked. “It says that if the FBI thinks you’re a terrorist, they have three days to go to court and get an adjudication, and if not, you can get a gun. Every terrorist will get a gun. If the FBI had that evidence, they would have arrested the person to begin with.”
Schumer also attacked Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, who suggested that a federal judge should oversee the watch list used to ban gun sales in order to ensure that law-abiding Americans don’t lose their rights.
“It also forces the government to rebuild the terror watch list and every person has to go to a FISA court before they can go on,” the New York Democrat said. “We’ll be here for decades. You know who either drafts these proposals or has to give their stamp of approval to these proposals? The NRA.”
The New York Times editorial board offered a similar proposal earlier this week.
“Congress should authorize no-buy lists but mandate that appropriate protections be put in place,” the editors wrote. “If the attorney general believes a suspected terrorist should be added to the list, she should have to go to court first and offer up evidence. … For maximum secrecy, Congress could assign these probable cause determinations to the jurisdiction of the existing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”
