“We’ve got to make this clear, constant case that Republicans have decided to sell weapons to ISIS,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told the Washington Post this week.
In a year that already abounds with examples of what’s wrong with American politics, a sitting senator actually said that.
The media rightly took note when Donald Trump ridiculously implied that the president of the United States was somehow secretly supportive of terrorists. When Murphy blames the entire opposition party for collusion with the Islamic State, he goes just as far beyond the bounds of acceptable debate.
He should be ashamed of himself. He should apologize. Instead, Democrats are embracing his rhetoric wholesale, including both the White House and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid.
Apologies are so 2014.
In his petulant diatribe, Murphy cited one tried-and-proven-ineffective gun control law (the “assault weapons ban”), in addition to his own flagrantly unconstitutional proposal, which was defeated despite his 15-hour talk-a-thon on the Senate floor. Neither of these would have stopped the Orlando shooting that now serves as a vehicle for Murphy’s political ambition. But that was never really the point.
Murphy’s bill would have allowed the government to take away certain Americans’ constitutionally protected freedoms with no trial and no charges. If your name is put on a list by someone behind a desk in Washington, you can no longer be trusted to own a gun. And if you’re not guilty? Well, then, how did your name get on the list then?
Note that this does not apply to aliens, resident or otherwise, who are suspected of terrorism. Foreigners already cannot legally purchase arms in the United States. So Murphy’s bill is a bill to take away American citizens’ rights.
Murphy’s problem is not the Republican Party, nor even the Second Amendment, but the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. This cherished section of the original Bill of Rights is supposed to be uncontroversial. It promises, among other things, that no American can “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
In conjunction with the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees all criminal defendants a speedy and public trial, the Fifth Amendment is widely understood to guarantee the presumption of innocence — another crucial concept of law that Murphy’s bill would eviscerate.
And so to make Murphy’s statement a bit more accurate: The Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution have decided to sell weapons to the Islamic State.
Except that in reality, that isn’t true either.
Every time a terrorist attack occurs, a debate arises among Americans whether they can or should protect themselves by giving up their own freedoms. After 9/11, civil libertarians found it an immense struggle to keep Congress from trampling the Fourth Amendment protection from illegal searches. That debate was touched off again a decade later by subsequent revelations of government surveillance of Americans’ cell phone use.
At times, those speaking out against the government’s response to terrorism have claimed that their First Amendment rights are under attack.
The debate over the Guantanamo prisoners, which has rattled around the court system for years, has centered around who enjoys the Sixth Amendment right to be charged and tried, not just punished, and what sort of due process is required for illegal combatants.
The bottom line is that when Americans are true to themselves, they are very solicitous of rights, even (or especially) the rights of those upon whom government’s often-clumsy and often-wrong suspicion falls.
Those same Republicans whom Murphy now accuses of a secret alliance to the Islamic State caliph proposed an alternative that was at least less obviously unconstitutional. Their proposal would have given the FBI 72 hours to investigate suspected terrorists before any gun purchase could go through.
Murphy voted against it, and that tells you everything you need to know about his good faith on this issue.
