More than 2,000 suspected terrorists on the FBI Watch List had no trouble buying firearms

[applegrove]

More than 2,000 suspected terrorists on the FBI Watch List had no trouble buying firearms

by Meteor Blades at the Daily Kos

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/11/17/1451153/-A-couple-of-thousand-suspected-terrorists-on-the-FBI-watch-list-had-no-trouble-buying-firearms

"SNIP.............




Firearms are easy to obtain in the United States—even if you’re a suspected terrorist. Christopher Ingraham reports:


"Membership in a terrorist organization does not prohibit a person from possessing firearms or explosives under current federal law," the Government Accountability Office concluded in 2010. The law prohibits felons, fugitives, drug addicts and domestic abusers from purchasing a firearm in the United States. But people on the FBI's consolidated terrorist watchlist — typically placed there when there is "reasonable suspicion" that they are a known or suspected terrorist — can freely purchase handguns or assault-style rifles.


And, as the GAO found, a number of them do: Between 2004 and 2014, suspected terrorists attempted to purchase guns from American dealers at least 2,233 times. And in 2,043 of those cases — 91 percent of the time — they succeeded. There are about 700,000 people on the watch-list — a point that civil libertarians have made to underscore that many on the list may be family members or acquaintances of people with potential terrorist connections

Now there are a lot of problems with the terrorist watchlist. As Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux have noted, the guidelines for putting people on the list don’t require any evidence they are actually linked to a terrorist organization. That means a lot of people on the list shouldn’t be, perhaps hundreds of thousands of them:

“Instead of a watchlist limited to actual, known terrorists, the government has built a vast system based on the unproven and flawed premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in the future,” says Hina Shamsi, the head of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “On that dangerous theory, the government is secretly blacklisting people as suspected terrorists and giving them the impossible task of proving themselves innocent of a threat they haven’t carried out.” Shamsi, who reviewed the [guidelines] document, added, “These criteria should never have been kept secret.”

...............SNIP"

Here is another article along the same vein:
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/11/17/1451133/-Texas-representatives-notices-war-refugees-could-buy-guns-in-Texas-duly-freaks-out

[applegrove]

1. Someone needs to ask the GOP how they feel about this.

[Lurks Often]

2. "The guidelines for putting people on the list don’t require any evidence"

I think I'll side with the ACLU on this one and the ACLU can hardly be considered a pro-gun organization

[linuxman]

3. How to get DU to oppose due process:

Step one: GUNZ!

[hack89]

4. Due process is non-negotiable when it come to constitutional rights

There should be no argument about it on a progressive board.

[applegrove]

5. A background check might help. In the job market people are interviewed

then references are checked. And the employer gets to decide if they will hire the person. Same way the gun market could be. Force gun background check on every gun sale and let the market decide if the FBI gives the buyer an okay.

[hack89]

6. No

No problem with universal background checks. But the criteria for rejection has to involve due process. We don't let the FBI arbitrarily decide who gets to exercise a right.

[beevul]

7. The b*sh terror list?

Really?

REALLY?

[Rex]

8. Sounds more like a "do not watch list".