With Republicans like Collins, why do we need Democrats?
(NY Times) With congressional leaders once again at a stalemate over how to respond to a mass shooting, the Senate’s most moderate Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, is developing a compromise measure that would prevent some terrorism suspects from purchasing weapons, while sidestepping partisan flash points that have doomed similar legislation in the past and threaten to do so again next week.
The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, has already scheduled votes for Monday on four proposals — two sponsored by Republicans and two by Democrats — but all four are expected to fail in a nearly identical replay of votes last December after the attack in San Bernardino, Calif. (snip)
The legislation being drafted by Ms. Collins would bar the sale of guns to terrorism suspects who appear on either the government’s no-fly list or the so-called “selectee†list, in which individuals are subjected to additional security screening before being allowed to board an airplane. Those lists are far more narrow than the federal terrorist screening database, which is the focus of a proposal sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, one of the four measures to be voted on Monday.
But while the gun restrictions proposed by Ms. Collins would target a narrower group of individuals, her measure does not require federal prosecutors to demonstrate “probable cause†of criminal terrorist activity, which is required in an alternative to the Feinstein measure sponsored by Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican.
And therein lies the problem: there is little in the way of Due Process protections for those accused. It’s that whole pesky Bill Of Rights thing, for which Democrats used to have a problem when it came to things like the no fly list(s), but which they no realize they can use to deny citizens their Constitutional rights to a firearm. Being accused of terrorism, which is used very broadly by Democrats, rather than aimed at actual terrorists, and being placed on these lists creates a situation with virtually no way to get yourself off, and is rife for abuse.
Democrats say Mr. Cornyn’s measure, which will also be voted on Monday, sets such a high burden of proof that it renders useless the underlying gun restrictions.
By “high burden of proof,”, they mean the government has to provide that evidence that you belong on a list, with the burden being on the government, than the citizen, which is the appropriate way.
Instead, Ms. Collins has proposed an appeals process that would award attorney’s fees to anyone who successfully challenged the government’s effort to prevent the sale of a firearm.
What mechanisms are there to successfully challenge? Is the burden on the citizen, or on the government? If it’s on the citizen, then that violates innocent till proven guilty, and is un-Constitutional.
What if your child was on one of these lists, and you couldn’t get them off?
You may not like Other People having guns (while refusing to give up your own), but, would you be OK with a secret list that would restrict you from, say, going on the Internet and speaking your mind, with virtually no mechanism in place to afford you the ability to get off the list and get your Constitutional Rights back? Do you think the burden should be on the Government, rather than you?
This “compromise” is essentially giving the liberal gun grabbers almost everything they want as a mechanism of abusing the power of government to deny citizens their 2nd Amendment rights.
Crossed at Right Wing News.
During wartime a POTUS has near unlimited power