Should we give up our rights because of the terror threat? ...

[spin]

"Terror Gap:" We Should Not Surrender Our Rights Because of Terrorists

The Brady Campaign, in addition to several other gun control advocacy groups, including Mayors Against Illegal guns, have latched on to this new "Terror Gap" issue, which advocates using the federal government's "no fly" list to deny gun purchases for American citizens. No one wants terrorists getting a hold of guns and other dangerous objects, but in the battle against terrorism, we should be careful not to surrender our rights and liberties, including our Second Amendment right to purchase a firearm for self-defense or recreation.

Currently federal law prohibits people convicted of certain crimes, or who have been adjudicated mentally defective, from purchasing or possessing a firearms. But a key aspect with either of these two situations is that the prohibition is not applied until the person has been convicted or adjudicated through due process of law. There are no such protections against getting added to the list, and no defined process for getting oneself removed. There have been a number of prominent individuals who have found their way onto the terror watch list, usually because they share a name with a terror suspect or his alias. Famous people who have ended up on the list are Composer John Williams, the late Senator Kennedy, and dead guitarist Robert Johnson, along with anyone unfortunate enough to share their names. Numerous problems with the no-fly list are probably why even liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union believe the list is unconstitutional.

There might be some disagreement and difference of opinion about exactly what our Second Amendment rights mean, but one would hope that most Americans would agree that no right explicitly protected by our Constitution can be removed or abridged in the manner the Brady Campaign suggests. We can be pretty sure that when our founders wrote "shall not be infringed" into the Bill of Rights, they didn't mean subject to cancellation at the whim of an unelected government bureaucrat with a list.

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/terror-gap-we-should-not-surrender-our-rights-because-of-terrorists

[rfranklin]

1. The Fourth Amendment was canceled by the Bush Junta...

and reaffirmed by the Obama administration.

[SteveM]

10. The cancellation must have included the 5th Amendment as well.

[oneshooter]

2. The Brady Campaign, in addition to several other gun control advocacy groups, including Mayors Again

This tells me all I need to know. :puke:

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas

[DirkGently]

3. No guns for anyone subject to government spying

Using the no-fly list to ban guns is a fantastic idea, because it will ensure that rightwingers suddenly begin to care about the REST of the Constitution for a change. No guns for anyone targeted for warrantless wiretaps. No guns for anyone anyone whose e-mail is illegally monitored. And absolutely, no guns for any of those infants and deceased people on the "No Fly" list.

This idea has legs. If we just require tacking "and, no guns" to every intrusive, fearful, incompetent, illegal, unconstitutional, security state measure conservatives have supported so lustily, I think we'll be well on our way to a more reasoned discussion about the "balance" between security and liberty.


:rofl:

[TPaine7]

4. Good point

There are far too many lunatics who could care less about being spied upon, as long as it's only happening to "those people."

Of course the solution is to get rid of EVERY "intrusive, fearful, incompetent, illegal, unconstitutional, security state measure conservatives have supported so lustily."

[gorfle]

6. LOL great idea.

:)

[spin]

5. One of the objects of terrorists is to change society ...

and limit the freedoms that citizens who live in Western nations enjoy.

Our government under the Bush administration fell into the trap willingly. Government loves power and power corrupts. Obviously, in order to fight terrorists steps have to be taken but we can still maintain our principals and not sacrifice our liberty.

Jurists Decry Loss of Rights
International Panel Says 'War on Terror' Has Diluted Principles

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 18, 2009

LONDON, Feb. 17 -- An international group of judges and lawyers has warned that systemic torture and other abuses in the global "war on terror" have "undermined cherished values" of civil rights in the United States, Britain and other countries.

"We have been shocked by the damage done over the past seven years by excessive or abusive counterterrorism measures in a wide range of countries around the world," Arthur Chaskalson, a member of the International Commission of Jurists, said in a statement announcing the results of a three-year study of counterterrorism measures since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

"Many governments, ignoring the lessons of history, have allowed themselves to be rushed into hasty responses to terrorism that have undermined cherished values and violated human rights,'' said Chaskalson, a former chief justice of South Africa.

***snip***

"Whilst the outgoing US administration was understandably aggrieved at the horrendous attacks of 9/11, it is possible to see, especially with hindsight, that many of its responses to the terrible tragedy were ill-advised," the report states.

The report said that Bush's decision to equate acts of terrorism with acts of war was "legally and conceptually flawed" and had done "immense damage" to the standing of international law.

Claiming that the United States was in a "war" against terrorism gave the Bush administration "spurious justification to a range of human rights and humanitarian law violations," the report said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/17/AR2009021703013.html

The Degrading Effects of Terrorism Fears
by Glenn Greenwald
Published on Saturday, January 2, 2010 by Salon

***snip***

This is what inevitably happens to a citizenry that is fed a steady diet of fear and terror for years. It regresses into pure childhood. The 5-year-old laying awake in bed, frightened by monsters in the closet, who then crawls into his parents' bed to feel Protected and Safe, is the same as a citizenry planted in front of the television, petrified by endless imagery of scary Muslim monsters, who then collectively crawl to Government and demand that they take more power and control in order to keep them Protected and Safe. A citizenry drowning in fear and fixated on Safety to the exclusion of other competing values can only be degraded and depraved. John Adams, in his 1776 Thoughts on Government, put it this way:

Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.

As Adams noted, political leaders possess an inherent interest in maximizing fear levels, as that is what maximizes their power. For a variety of reasons, nobody aids this process more than our establishment media, motivated by their own interests in ratcheting up fear and Terrorism melodrama as high as possible. The result is a citizenry far more terrorized by our own institutions than foreign Terrorists could ever dream of achieving on their own. For that reason, a risk that is completely dwarfed by numerous others -- the risk of death from Islamic Terrorism -- dominates our discourse, paralyzes us with fear, leads us to destroy our economic security and eradicate countless lives in more and more foreign wars, and causes us to beg and plead and demand that our political leaders invade more of our privacy, seize more of our freedom, and radically alter the system of government we were supposed to have. The one thing we don't do is ask whether we ourselves are doing anything to fuel this problem and whether we should stop doing it. As Adams said: fear "renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable."

What makes all of this most ironic is that the American Founding was predicated on exactly the opposite mindset. The Constitution is grounded in the premise that there are other values and priorities more important than mere Safety. Even though they knew that doing so would help murderers and other dangerous and vile criminals evade capture, the Framers banned the Government from searching homes without probable cause, prohibited compelled self-incrimination, double jeopardy and convictions based on hearsay, and outlawed cruel and unusual punishment. That's because certain values -- privacy, due process, limiting the potential for abuse of government power -- were more important than mere survival and safety. A central calculation of the Constitution was that we insist upon privacy, liberty and restraints on government power even when doing so means we live with less safety and a heightened risk of danger and death. And, of course, the Revolutionary War against the then-greatest empire on earth was waged by people who risked their lives and their fortunes in pursuit of liberty, precisely because there are other values that outweigh mere survival and safety. emphasis added
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/02

[gorfle]

7. The Terror Watch List is a farce.

The terror watch list is a farce. The government has admitted that there are people known not to be terrorists who are on the list, and there are people known to be terrorists who are purposefully not on the list, out of fear of disclosing to the bad guys that we are on to them.

So if the list is known not to have actual real bad guys on it, and is known to have innocent people on it, and it is secret, WHAT FUCKING GOOD IS IT?

It's good for security theater, and that's about it.

It's certainly not good for revoking Constitutionally-protected rights on a whim.

[Euromutt]

8. Is that a trick question?

I have one issue with the piece as written:

Numerous problems with the no-fly list are probably why even liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union believe the list is unconstitutional.

The word "even" does not belong in that sentence. What non-liberal groups have we seen objecting to the "suspected terrorist watch lists," on constitutional grounds or otherwise? You do a Google search on "no fly list unconstitutional," and the ACLU is not only the first link that pops up, but for several pages, it's the only activist group that objected to the watch lists before Lautenberg came up with the idea of barring people on the lists from acquiring firearms.

[eqfan592]

9. Yeah, I picked up on that as well. (nt)