Democrats in Congress are calling for a law to bar people on terrorist watch lists from purchasing firearms, and it only seems like common sense. If people suspected of affiliation to terror groups can be barred from flying on a commercial airliner, then they shouldn’t be able to walk into a gun store and purchase weapons.
But letap keep in mind a couple of caveats, too. First, such a law would not have stopped Omar Mateen from buying his guns for his murderous spree in Orlando. He wasn’t on a watch list at the time he bought them.
And second, there are valid civil liberty concerns involved in depriving people of a right through an administrative process that is potentially error-prone. Itap not only the NRA that worries about the makeup of watch lists. Itap the ACLU and other groups that Democrats usually take more seriously.
In a commentary published two years ago, for example, criticized “a massive, virtually standardless government watchlisting scheme that ensnares innocent people and encourages racial and religious profiling.”
If Congress is going to bar gun sales by individuals on a watch list, it should insist the criteria for the list are tight and rigorous rather than susceptible to broad bureaucratic discretion.
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