Monday, September 13, 2021

Federal Government Continues To Prove It Can’t Be Trusted With Gun Owner Data; FBI Abuses ‘no-fly list’ to Infringe on Second Amendment Rights

7044741 REUTERS/Gary Cameron
Federal Government Continues To Prove It Can’t Be Trusted With Gun Owner Data:
The federal government has rarely made a habit of covering itself in glory, but in recent weeks it seems determined to engender mistrust among the American public. In only the last month, three fresh examples of the federal government’s inability to secure sensitive data have come to light. These examples of official incompetence have once again made clear that the federal government cannot be trusted with gun owner data.
Federal bureaucrats and gun control advocates have made clear that they want the government to maintain more information on firearms and firearm owners. ATF routinely whines about how the out-of-business dealer records (4473s) housed at the National Tracing Center have not been converted into a digitized searchable format. ATF director nominee and paid gun control lobbyist David Chipman has called for the federal registration of tens of millions of commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms.
Gun rights advocates understand that collection of gun and gun owner data facilitates firearm confiscation. In addition to several notable instances in foreign countries, registration records were used to confiscate firearms in New York City in 1991 and 2013. Prominent U.S. politicians such as President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) have all called for gun confiscation. National Council to Control Handguns (now Brady) Chairman Nelson “Pete” Shields acknowledged registration as a prerequisite to handgun confiscation.
However, the ever-present threat of confiscation is not the only compelling argument against the government collecting data on guns and gun owners. The federal government’s impotence in safeguarding data is a constant threat to gun owner privacy. --->READ MORE HERE
Illustration by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times
FBI abuses ‘no-fly list’ to infringe on Second Amendment rights:
Used to deprive law-abiding citizens of their right to purchase a gun
Remember all the calls by Democrats to ban people on the FBI’s terror watch list from buying guns? Well, it turns out that those proposals would have affected nearly 2 million people. Since the Transportation Security Administration announced in January that it was considering adding Jan. 6th Capitol protesters to the U.S. No Fly List, it is little wonder that the list has grown so long.
When the list first started being compiled in 2003, no one would have dreamed that so many names would end up on it. Even as late as 2009, there were 400,000 names — little more than a fifth of today’s number. The fact that almost 2 million people are on the terror watch list is a sad testament to the power that we give unnamed and unaccountable bureaucrats and should caution those who wish to use the list as a basis for far-reaching policies.
Being on the watch list doesn’t mean that you are guilty of anything. You can be on the list simply because the FBI wants to interview you about someone you might know. As of 2014, about 40 percent of people on the watch list were under “reasonable suspicion” despite having “no affiliation with known terrorist groups.” People can get nominated for the list by various government agencies, and no oversight agency exists to ensure that these additions are justified.
The Democrats want to strip all 2 million of these people of their Second Amendment rights. When he was president, Barack Obama called for a ban on gun sales to people on the watch list. Sen. Dianne Feinstein tried to add a ban as a budget amendment in 2016, but Republicans blocked it. Republicans had their version of the ban, but they at least required a court hearing before people were listed, which was unacceptable to Democrats. --->READ MORE HERE

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