This is the front page of the New York Daily News today:
Today's front page of the NY Daily News pic.twitter.com/jANuRmSBk4
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) November 23, 2015Where to start with this incredible smear job. First of all, there is no such thing as a "terrorist loophole" as the NYDN claims. Second, the NRA doesn't support terrorists purchasing firearms. Third, the legislation the NYDN, Schumer and Bratton are calling for strips due process for hundreds-of-thousands of Americans who have been deemed "terrorists" and put on the severely flawed terror watch list. Bob Owens has more:
The New York Daily News is continuing their insane attempt to use fears of terrorism to deny nearly a million Americans due process before stripping them of their basic human rights, including 300,000 on watch lists with no ties of any kind to terrorist groups.
Hundreds of thousands of American citizens have been placed on terror watch lists for no reason at all by faceless and unaccountable bureaucrats for arbitrary reasons.
I was added to a watch list in January of 2013 for writing an article, and Cam spoke with a number of other people who’d been added to terrorist watch lists for doing something as innocuous as accidentally using an expired credit card to buy a plane ticket. Another lady was flagged by Homeland Security for hopping among various travel sites trying to find the best deal on a flight to Ireland.
It took the later lady eighteen months to get her name off the list.
Ted Kennedy was on the no-fly list. Many active duty military servicemen are on these lists. One in every 300 Americans is on a terror watch list, for reasons that vary from very good (ties to known terrorist groups) to utterly arbitrary (using a travel web site in a “suspicious manner”).
The Daily Mail call to attack the NRA and rank-and-file Americans is nothing more or less than a totalitarian attempt to undermine the constitutional rights of all Americans.
Who could forget the 2009 report from Homeland Security deeming "right-wing" activists as racist, paranoid terrorists?
"Rightwing extremists are harnessing this historical election as a recruitment tool. Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms ownership and use. Rightwing extremists are increasingly galvanized by these concerns and leverage them as drivers for recruitment. From the 2008 election time frame to the present, rightwing extremists have capitalized on related racial and political prejudices in expanded propaganda campaigns, thereby reaching out to a wider audience of potential sympathizers," the report stated.
Last year the Huffington Post ran a lengthy piece about the ways everyday Americans can easily end up on the terror watch list, regardless of whether they actually have ties to terrorism.
Earlier this week, The Intercept published a 166-page document outlining the government's guidelines for placing people on an expansive network of terror watch lists, including the no-fly list. In their report, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux highlighted the extremely vague and loosely defined criteria developed by 19 federal agencies, supposedly to fight terrorism.
Using these criteria, government officials have secretly characterized an unknown number of individuals as threats or potential threats to national security. In 2013 alone, 468,749 watch-list nominations were submitted to the National Counterterrorism Center. It rejected only 1 percent of the recommendations.
Critics say the system is bloated and imprecise, needlessly sweeping up thousands of people while simultaneously failing to catch legitimate threats, like Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
While some individuals are surely placed on these watch lists for valid reasons, the murky language of the guidelines suggests that innocent people can get caught up in this web, too, and be subjected to the same possible restrictions on travel and other forms of monitoring.
And finally, it's thanks to the NRA that Americans have the ability to defend themselves should ISIS come knocking on their door in cities across the country.
The terrorism watch list is deeply flawed and regularly violates the civil rights of law abiding American citizens. To suggest the NRA, Wayne LaPierre or any other Second Amendment proponent is in favor of terrorists purchasing guns is beyond asinine and disgraceful.