Democrats, who never weary of proclaiming their own supposed tolerance, are planning to strip rights from a group of citizens who are disproportionately Muslim. Determined not to let today’s terrorism crisis go to waste, Senate Democrats are trying hitch their obsessive gun-control agenda to public fears about terrorism in the American homeland.
Weary of losing so often, the gun banners have drawn up a bill called the Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2015. It is more a rhetorical assault than a serious or enforceable policy. If passed, it would strip citizens of the right to purchase or bear arms if their name is on the national terror watch list.
To be clear, names are put on the list on the basis of suspicion and sometimes on the basis of bureaucratic error. A name on the list certainly does not imply the existence of any evidence against the named person, still less that they have been accused or convicted of a crime.
This issue is interesting not because it has any chance of enactment, but because of what it reveals about those embracing it. It pits Democrats’ sanctimonious but empty rhetoric about discrimination and civil liberties against their passionate desire to gut the Second Amendment.
The chief effect of gun control laws on the books today is not to prevent mass shootings, but to imprison black men disproportionately. Even so, at least defendants in such weapons cases are entitled to actual trials by their peers, to the presumption of innocence and to the right to call witnesses and confront their accusers.
Gun control activists now want full American citizens to be stripped of their constitutional rights without due process or even a credible accusation of criminal or terrorist activity. Someone in a faceless bureaucracy can put your name on a list that has no established criteria and no judicial checks or balances, and voila, the Bill of Rights no longer applies to you. Suspicion by law enforcement suddenly makes you into a second-class citizen.
This proposal is bold in its sophistry but unimpressive in its logic. Were it to survive scrutiny in the courts, which it would not, it could eventually be used to gut the rights even of its proponents. What happens if a certain political candidate who shares their disregard for civil rights becomes president? He or she might decide that those who advocate for gun control belong on that same secret watch list for being subversive.
And if Second Amendment rights are susceptible to this kind of administrative seizure, why not other rights? The consequences of being on a watch list could surely expand to include loss of the right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure, for example, or to be compensated for property takings by government.
It is less surprising than you might think that those on the Left should cast off due process and civil liberties so lightly. Modern-day progressivism, with its campus witch-hunts and societal micromanagement, long ago abandoned the civil-libertarian tradition to which yesterday’s liberals belonged. Today the Left, and its representatives on Capitol Hill, pay endless lip service to their own tolerance, but in truth they are an intolerant bunch.
The foundational principle of today’s New Left is that one cannot trust one’s fellow citizens. They cannot handle the right to speak publicly in ways that might offend; nor to choose their own insurance coverage; nor to plan their own retirement; nor to choose how their children will be educated; nor to seek employment on whatever terms suit them; and so forth. And if citizens cannot be trusted with these simple rights, then they surely cannot be trusted with firearms.
Progressives are quick to claim unjust discrimination or violations of rights wherever they believe it will create sympathy for their agenda. Let this serve as a reminder that the same agenda will also drive them to discriminate and trample rights if they see any benefit in doing so. And they can see no benefit greater than undoing the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
