People whose names appear on a federal terror watch list or no-fly list shouldn’t be presumed “innocent until proven guilty” for purposes of buying a firearm, according to Democratic lawmakers.
“I don’t think that innocent until proven guilty is the standard that applies here,” Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., told the Washington Examiner. “We’re talking about owning a gun, not being convicted of a crime.”
Congressional Democrats, in the wake of the Orlando, Fla., terrorist attack on Saturday, have renewed their call to ban individuals on the terror watch list from purchasing weapons. Most Republicans maintain that such a law would restrict people’s Second Amendment rights without due process of law.
“Here’s what it boils down to: The presumption, I believe, should be in favor of keeping guns out of a person’s hand if they’re on the list,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin told the Examiner. “I think Republicans feel the opposite.”
The debate has triggered a role reversal from the days of George W. Bush’s administration, when Democrats declared secret lists such as the no-fly list an affront to constitutional rights, but Republicans insisted they were a necessary national security measure in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“Bear in mind that if you’re wrong in your suspicion and somebody doesn’t get a gun who would not have misused it, then what you’ve done is you’ve denied one person a gun,” Grayson said. “But if you’re wrong in your decision and you allow somebody to have a gun who misuses it, then what you’ve done in many cases is you’ve taken away people’s lives.”
The late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., famously was barred from boarding an airplane because a terror suspect had used his name as an alias, necessitating a series of urgent phone calls between the senator and the Department of Homeland Security.
“How in the world are average Americans who are going to get caught up in this kind of thing, how are they going to be able to get treated fairly and not have their rights abused?” Kennedy said in 2004.
Durbin acknowledged the Kennedy incident, but argued that the watch list gun ban that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., sponsored addresses the concerns raised by that event because it would create two mechanisms for a “due process appeal” to have one’s name taken off the list.
“If you’re going to say that every one on the watch list has to be adjudicated onto the watch list, you won’t have a watch list,” he told the Examiner. “[Feinstein] specifies two legal avenues to protest your name being included … It certainly gives due process.”
Ultimately, one senior Democratic lawmaker predicted, the issue will have to be decided by the courts.
“I am sure that the constitutional questions will come up in judiciary especially,” Rep. John Conyers, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told the Examiner. “I’m not sure if they will be controlling. I think they may be found justifiable. You know, it always turns on what kind of court you’ve got upstairs [at the Supreme Court].”
