By Bob Egelko
Great day for mass murderers as gun control measures rejected by US Senate
San Francisco: Legislation proposed in Congress, which would bar gun sales to people on a government terrorist watch list, has achieved a rare distinction - a thumbs-down from both the National Rifle Association and the American Civil Liberties Union.
For the NRA, virtually any restriction on buying or selling firearms is unacceptable, and this one, dubbed ``No-fly, no-buy", is tied to a list whose embarrassing mistakes have prevented young children and the late Senator Edward Kennedy from boarding aircraft.
``The right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution,'' said NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker. ``Flying on a plane is not the same as a Second Amendment right.''
Senator Susan Collins unveils a new gun legislation proposal. Credit: AP
For the ACLU, the problem is a list that is shrouded in secrecy, giving those affected little notice of the reasons for their inclusion on it and little opportunity to challenge those reasons. The organisation won a ruling from a federal judge in 2014 requiring the government to provide more information to watch-listed air travellers but says it hasn't made much of a difference.
The system ``uses vague and over-broad criteria and secret evidence to place individuals on blacklists without a meaningful process to correct government error and clear their names,'' the ACLU said this week in a letter to senators opposing all the proposed gun laws.
The government established confidential terrorist watch lists after the September 11, 2001, attacks, and has expanded them under the administrations of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. According to FBI records, the overall watch list known as the Terrorist Screening Database contains 1 million names of known or suspected terrorists, of which only a small fraction - fewer than 5000 - are US citizens or legal residents. The no-fly list contains about 81,000 individuals, fewer than 1000 of them Americans.
The lists are so secretive that people first learn of their inclusion when they're unable to buy a plane ticket -- and even then, the information has generally come from the ticket agent, not the government. The FBI refused for more than a decade to confirm that an individual passenger was on the list or say anything about the reasons.
A sit-in on Wednesday of more than 200 Democrats demand a vote on measures to expand background checks and block gun purchases by some suspected terrorists.Credit: AP
The first judicial inroad came in January 2014, when US District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco ruled, following a trial conducted largely behind closed doors, that the FBI had mistakenly placed Stanford graduate student Rahinah Ibrahim on the no-fly list a decade earlier because of an agent's paperwork error. Alsup ordered officials to remove her name from the list but said it was up to the government to decide whether to grant her a visa to return to the US from her native Malaysia.
In June 2014, another federal judge, Anna Brown of Oregon, ruled in an ACLU lawsuit that the FBI had violated the rights of 13 American Muslims by refusing to tell them why they were barred from flying. Brown ordered the government to inform them whether they were on the no-fly list and describe the reasons as fully as possible without divulging state secrets.
US House Speaker Paul Ryan in Washington on Thursday. Credit: Bloomberg
Rather than appealing, the Obama administration agreed to apply the ruling to all US citizens and legal residents who asked whether they were on the no-fly list. But ACLU attorney Hugh Handeyside said on Friday the changes still haven't given travellers a meaningful opportunity to challenge their exclusion. The government will tell someone whether he or she is on the list, but provide only a brief summary of the unclassified reasons without citing any supporting evidence, Handeyside said.
If someone makes a challenge in writing, the government will decide on its own whether to uphold a protest, but it won't provide a hearing, he said.
The secretive lists have become a prime issue in federal gun legislation introduced after the Orlando massacre, in which the gunman, Omar Mateen, had been included on a terror watch list as recently as 2014 before the FBI removed his name.
Mateen used a semiautomatic assault rifle and a handgun, both legally purchased, to kill 49 people and wound 53 at a gay nightclub on June 12 before being killed by police.
One measure by Senator Dianne Feinstein, would forbid gun sales to any of the 1 million people on the overall watch list, but only if the US attorney general decides, after an individual review, that the person poses a threat to public safety.
Another proposal by Senator Susan Collins, would deny gun purchases to anyone on either the no-fly list or the ``selectee'' list of about 28,000 people who are not barred from flying but must undergo extensive screening at the airport. Collins' bill would not require individual review by the attorney general, but would allow would-be gun buyers to challenge their rejection in a federal appeals court and get the government to pay their attorneys' fees if they succeed.
Those and related measures were the subject of a 26-hour sit-in this week by House Democrats demanding a vote on gun restrictions. The protesting House members were turned aside by House Speaker Paul Ryan, who adjourned the chamber for the July 4 recess. On the Senate side, none of the gun-control proposals has yet secured the 60 votes needed to withstand a filibuster by pro-NRA Republicans.
New York Times