The Los Angeles Times editorial board broke this week with major newsrooms and President Obama, and announced that it opposes efforts to strip suspects on the federal government’s terrorist watch list of their Second Amendment rights.
“One problem is that the people on the no-fly list (as well as the broader terror watch list from which it is drawn) have not been convicted of doing anything wrong,” the newspaper’s board said.
“They are merely suspected of having terror connections. And the United States doesn’t generally punish or penalize people unless and until they have been charged and convicted of a crime. In this case, the government would be infringing on a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution — and yes, like it or not, the right to buy a gun is a constitutional right according to the U.S. Supreme Court,” the board added.
Much like the Republican senators who voted last week against the measure championed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the LA Times believes it’s unfair and unconstitutional to deprive citizens of their rights without due process. But Democratic lawmakers and the president don’t quite see it that way.
“What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semiautomatic weapon?” Obama asked Sunday evening during an address from the Oval Office.
The L.A. Times responded, “When he puts it that way, it does sound pretty stupid. But, in fact, there are several strong arguments against the proposal.”
“How certain is it that the people on the two lists are dangerous? Well, we don’t really know, because the no-fly-list and the broader watch list are government secrets,” the board continued. “People are not notified when they are put on, nor why, and they usually don’t discover they have been branded suspected terrorists until they try to travel somewhere.”
However, thanks to work by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, which is suing over the terror database, some real flaws have been identified.
“[T]he two lists include thousands of names that have been added in error, as well as the names of family members of suspected terrorists. The no-fly list has also been used to deny boarding passes to people who only share a name with a suspected terrorist,” they wrote.
And then there’s the fact that the database is comprised almost entirely of non-citizens living overseas.
“That’s important because federal law already bars gun sales to most people who are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents or holders of valid visas, which means the vast majority of the people on the suspected terror list would already be barred from buying a firearm in the U.S. even without Feinstein’s law. That leaves us with about 10,000 American citizens (and some legal residents) who, under the proposed law, would be barred from exercising a constitutional right,” the editorial board said.
“That gives us pause,” it added.
The paper added that none of the recent mass shootings, including the two radicalized Islamic terrorists shot and killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., would have been stopped by the watch list.
“[M]ore than 2,000 people on the list bought firearms from 2004 to 2014, there’s no available information on whether any of those weapons have been used in a crime, let alone an act of terrorism,” they wrote.
The board is clear, however, that it dislikes “assault rifles or other military-style firearms,” and that it disagrees with the Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling that the Second Amendment is an individual right, and that American citizens have the right to bear arms at home.
Nevertheless, they argued, it is a recognized right under law, and it would be problematic to strip an American citizen of this right without due process.
“Ending gun violence is critically important, but so is protecting basic civil liberties. Although we agree to the ends here, we object to the means,” they concluded.
The LA Times’ stand against efforts to bar terror suspects from their Second Amendment rights is a sharp contrast to when the New York Times attacked Republican lawmakers last weekend for voting down the proposal.
“Mr. Ryan’s Senate colleagues demonstrated that they are more worried about the possibility that someone might be turned away from a gun shop than shielding the public against violent criminals,” the editorial board said, referring to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
The Times also accused GOP lawmakers of being complicit in “arming potential terrorism suspects.”
But as recently as last year, the Times was very much against the watch list, and said in an editorial on April 18, 2014, that said the terror database is a “shadowy” threat to “basic rights.”
