No Fly Lists And Guns

Last night, along with many others, I watched and listened to the Presidents speech. I didn't hear anything particularly new so I'm not sure what the point of it was. He did say one thing though that caught my attention and it surprises me that my liberal friends don't seem to have a problem with it.

The president mentioned no fly lists. More specifically the idea that he'd like to see measures taken that would prevent people on the list from being able to purchase a gun. On the surface it sounds great,though it wouldn't have prevented the California killing, but then I started to really think about it.

Who is on this “no fly list?” Who is the person or entity that makes such arbitrary decisions? The answer is that no one knows. The people who are on the lists don't know that they are on it unless they have tried to fly somewhere. What is known is that there are something along the line of 700,000 people just on that one list and, from what I understand ,there are actually 6 lists.

Whatever happened to due process? What ever happened to the concept of meeting your accusers in a court of law or having the right to appeal? To the best of my knowledge once you are on it there is no appeal process this based on cases of mistaken identity of totally innocent people finding themselves on the list.

The founders of this country understood all to well what it was to be on lists and arbitrarily have what few rights they had removed ,that's why the wrote the Constitution the way that they did, so that the rights of the individual would be protected.

Now,along with secret lists, we have a president openly encouraging congress to enact a law that would take rights away from people, who have never been charged or convicted of anything.

You may not like guns, and that's your right, but are you really comfortable with the government removing a right from a person based on an list with no evidence of wrong doing? Whats to stop them from putting you or me on the list for no other reason than we made someone powerful mad or uncomfortable?

Even more, if we allow this to follow it's natural course, whats to stop the government from going after all of our rights based on lists? How could you stop it? The door would be open, it would only be a matter of time. Freedom of speech has been under attack by the PC police for awhile now, if I make someone in power mad are they going to come and take my computer so that I can't write anymore because what I write might be offensive to them?? The AG has said that she would go after people who spoke out against Islam in a borderline violent way, so if I say I don't like Islam or that I utterly despise the Koran and Sharia, are they going to arrest me or put me on a list that prevents me from ever buying a computer again simply for speaking my own mind. Is that considered “borderline violent”?

Do they come and arrest me for trying to blog. Where does it end?

Bottom line; you don't have to like guns. You don't even have to agree with the second amendment but you want to be real careful of just how far you want to allow congress to go. You may find yourself on a list someday.....