American politics 2016: Lawyers, Guns, and D-Money

we should be trying to live in a country less like a secret-police state, not enshrining the techniques of same.

i'm not an expert on due process law but from my pov it protects u from "arbitrary denial of life, liberty, or property by the Government outside the sanction of law," and a no fly list is neither arbitrary nor a denial of life liberty or property. gun rights advocates would say that denying someone the right to buy a gun is a denial of their liberty but not imo.

Mordy, The due process rights are in regards to taking away someone's constitutional 2nd amendment right to buy a gun without a constitutionally safe legal procedure.

People should have the right to challenge no-fly list placements, but the basis is different

Yes I'm aware of the claim I just don't buy it as morally relevant.

2014 case

The Supreme Court has recognized a constitutionally-protected interest in “a person’s good name, reputation, honor, or integrity” – which the group of 13 said was damaged by their inclusion on the list. In this case, the government didn’t even contest the fact that people on the list suffer a stigma as a result of being on it.

The right to travel is also a recognized constitutional interest, but the government argued commercial airline travel doesn’t fit under that umbrella and that people on the no-fly list can use other modes of transportation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/06/25/judge-rules-no-fly-list-unconstitutional/

wait wait wait wait wait. how is a no-fly list not arbitrary? how is it not a denial of liberty or property? procedural due process involves being able to face one's accuser, present evidence in open court, etc. etc. here, let's go to wikipedia:

Procedural due process

This protection extends to all government proceedings that can result in an individual's deprivation, whether civil or criminal in nature, from parole violation hearings to administrative hearings regarding government benefits and entitlements to full-blown criminal trials. The article "Some Kind of Hearing" written by Judge Henry Friendly created a list of basic due process rights "that remains highly influential, as to both content and relative priority."[16] These rights, which apply equally to civil due process and criminal due process, are:[16]

An unbiased tribunal.
Notice of the proposed action and the grounds asserted for it.
Opportunity to present reasons why the proposed action should not be taken.
The right to present evidence, including the right to call witnesses.
The right to know opposing evidence.
The right to cross-examine adverse witnesses.
A decision based exclusively on the evidence presented.
Opportunity to be represented by counsel.
Requirement that the tribunal prepare a record of the evidence presented.
Requirement that the tribunal prepare written findings of fact and reasons for its decision.

"no-whatever" lists basically fail all of that. i would call them kafkaesque but according to google that has been done five thousand times already.

You're making a legal case to argue against a moral one - the discourses overlap but are not synonymous. I don't believe from a moral perspective anyone has a right to own a gun and I'm as concerned with keeping to a legal constitutional fidelity about as much as I am committed to any unjust law that is enshrined in a legal system.

i don't like this on principle nor as a means of preventing terrorist attacks nor mass shootings

― goole, Thursday, June 16, 2016 11:31 AM (22 minutes ago

i share your (and man alive/alfred's) civil liberties concerns but i think it's important to remember that the point of these laws isn't necessarily to prevent "mass shootings" but rather the everyday killings that don't make national news but compose the bulk of gun deaths. pushing to pass these laws after horrific tragedies is, unfortunately, just the most politically feasible way to do it

though yes starting with domestic violence and other violent criminals is a great place to start, but by no means is it enough

My only moral concern would be the general erosion of concern for law which is obv strong underpinning of society but in this case I think that saving lives takes precedence. This is not dissimilar to right wing anti abortion advocates except that this principle is not a fantasy about saving lives but actually about real lives.

the ACLU also reminds us that "the criteria for inclusion are so broad and vague that they inevitably ensnare innocent people engaged in First Amendment-protected speech, activity, or association." it is the kind of power a police state wants, and uses. getting rid of the guns is profoundly important; in my dream world we punt the second amendment and start an enormous buyback-and-melt-down program.

in the meantime i am all for moving forward on assault weapons bans, background checks, long-ass waiting periods, mandatory long boring training/licensing programs, denial of guns to people with actual, on-file records for violent crimes, and whatever else we can think of. it's not like giving tacit - hell, explicit - support to the idea of secret lists of People We Know Are Bad is the only way to do deal with this crisis.

mordy a no-fly list that is secretive and does not allow challenge is the very definition of arbitrary, come on. and while i share your views on guns in general it seems obvious that many would consider the restriction on flying or buying a gun to be an infringement on their liberty

I respect and agree w/man alive's and Alfred's concerns about the legality/feasibility of the proposed measures but from a moral standpoint I totally agree with Mordy re:

You're making a legal case to argue against a moral one - the discourses overlap but are not synonymous. I don't believe from a moral perspective anyone has a right to own a gun and I'm as concerned with keeping to a legal constitutional fidelity about as much as I am committed to any unjust law that is enshrined in a legal system.

The no-fly list already exists and it isn't what is under debate. The debate is whether to use it to prevent gun acquisitions. I understand if you're afraid of enshrining it but expanding it to guns, esp if it's politically feasible, doesn't inherently concern me.

The word "arbitrary" does not appear in the due process clause Mordy. With all due respect you are just inventing your own version of the fifth and fourteenth amendments that have little do do either with the text or the way they have been interpreted for 200+ years.

I don't think you really understand the argument I'm making if you think it has anything to do with legal precedence.

The no-fly list is under debate and the subject of court challenges. That's part of the point.

Ok, I mean if your argument is "I don't think we should have a constitution" or "I don't think we should take the constitution very seriously" that's fine. There are functioning modern democracies that don't have constitutions at all.

From a more practical standpoint, it's also worth noting that it would be a grossly underinclusive list. Have there actually been any mass shootings by people on the no-fly list that we know of? This guy was not.

Almost. We should not take parts of the constitution seriously when they transgress a significant moral principle - like saving lives. Consider a settled analogue that was also enshrined in law- like slavery.

Once you've extended the no fly list to gun ownership -- which, like it or not, is a constitutional right legally equivalent to free speech -- how do you then make a legal argument against extending the no fly list to cover other constitutional rights, like speech, assembly, arbitrary detention, etc.? I get that you're making a moral rather than a legal argument. My response is that you can't wish the legal argument away when creating laws that may set precedents for further expansions? (The flip side is that this is the very reason why such an expansion may not survive a legal challenge.)

Right I did mention above that there is a principle of respect for the rest of the constitution that flagrant disregard for the second amendment could erode. I think that's a serious consideration.

Almost. We should not take parts of the constitution seriously when they transgress a significant moral principle - like saving lives. Consider a settled analogue that was also enshrined in law- like slavery.

― Mordy, Thursday, June 16, 2016 11:22 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Gun ownership and slavery are not morally analogous. Slavery is an absolute moral wrong and a direct harm to another person in all instances.

I mean that's really the sticking point right - how direct a threat to human life is the right to buy guns.

my objection is moral: it's wrong to expand, buttress, and give justification to the tactics of a secret-police state. it does irreparable harm. it offends my moral sensibilities. the legal case comes in because the moral objection to the injustice of secret courts and arbitrary lists has been instantiated in a legal tradition called "due process rights."

no one here is talking about a moral right to own a gun; if it seems like i am, then i've been misunderstood, or there is some kind of rhetorical switcheroo going on here akin to bowers v. hardwick's refusal of a due process right (substantive, not procedural, but still) to engage in consensual sexual conduct unmolested by the government - "gosh i've never heard of a right to sodomy" - that wasn't the right that was actually being claimed or disputed but the judges chose to hear it that way. if that's what's going on here then it really bothers me, but i'm going to assume i'm just not expressing myself clearly.

imo if "we should link it to, or model it on, the no-fly lists!" is accepted as a solution to problems then the fascists have already won. and again if you're just trying to adopt some radically pragmatic approach - eff rights, there's a crisis, we need results! - can you really argue that this solution actually promises any compelling results? moreso than others? every story i've ever read about someone trying to get off the no-fly list, or have their status explained or justified or discussed in open court without all the documents redacted beyond legibility, makes my skin crawl. it really is kafkaesque ("before the law," specifically). we don't need more of that.

to my knowledge only one person has ever successfully gotten her name taken off the no-fly lists in the courts; it took ten years and it turned out it was because some agent or bureaucrat mistakenly thought they were checking the boxes of lists NOT to put someone on. ten years of stalling, court battles, legal fees, and generally fucking up someone's life (and in this case their academic career), in order to, i guess, keep that check-box goof from getting out there. and we want this to become more normal?

re terror watch list proposed bills:

the Feinstein bill allowed law enforcement officials to block a sale only after showing that a prospective gun buyer on the watch list was known or suspected to be involved in terrorism. If blocked, the person could challenge that denial in federal court. (A competing bill introduced by Senator John Cornyn, a Republican, would give authorities only three days to prove that a suspect is about to commit an act of terrorism — a nearly impossible standard to meet.)

Yeah, intending to commit a crime in the future is notoriously hard to criminalize (cf. a stupid movie, plus it is the reason the FBI couldn't just arrest the Orlando shooter - he hadn't shot anybody yet).

afaik there's about 1m people on the terror watch list, and about 300k on the no fly list (don't remember where i saw these figs). no idea how many of them are american citizens, or if that even matters.

that's a tiny number of people compared to the amount of shooting deaths & crimes in this country

omar mateen was background checked and armed as a part of his job

idk this is all pointless, obviously in dicey territory constitutionally. sometimes i like political theater but here i just don't. this has only a stretched relationship to what happened in orlando

Solution: put all Americans on no-fly list, ban weapon sales/ownership for all on no-fly list, decide on case-by-case basis who's cool to fly.

Regarding The Pulse nightclub shootings

“Barack Obama is directly responsible for it, because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama’s failures,” McCain said.

he's losing it imo

lol yes if only we had just occupied Iraq indefinitely, things would've gone great

(he never had it)

god what a moron

I hold McCain directly responsible for consistently voting for the legality of assault weapons

there, that was easy

Ha, just coming over to post the McCain thing. I guess he means it's George Bush's fault, because there would have been no troops for Obama to pull out of Iraq had Bush not sent them there to begin with. I wonder where McCain stood on that one.

That shit is so transparently disingenuous. What a douche.

Trump hold him directly responsible for getting himself shot down.

good old John McCain

"I was referring to President Obama’s national security decisions, not the President himself."

What is the distinction here? "Not him, just what he did."

It's not what he does but rather what's in his heart that matters.

I must have missed isis having anything to do with that shooting whatsoever bar the murderer giving them a shout-out

can we get a list of Republicans who aren't walking dumpster fires

sure here it is

[this page intentionally left blank]

tempting to list any republicans who have refused to endorse trump but then you'd be including the bushes who are really ultimately responsible for the whole mess in the first place

Chuck Todd yesterday that McCain has never quite recovered from losing in 2008; he's still amazed people chose Obama over him.

*SAID yesterday

anyway good ol' maverick John McCain, barbecuing for the press

McCain seems to forget the years between 2001-2008 as to why nobody would pick him over Barry

heh:

http://bipartisanreport.com/2016/06/16/congresswoman-proposes-top-1-act-to-drug-test-wealthy-people-who-get-tax-breaks-quotes/

I must have missed isis having anything to do with that shooting whatsoever bar the murderer giving them a shout-out

― The Nickelbackean Ethics (jim in glasgow), Thursday, June 16, 2016 4:07 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

don't worry, there isn't one. McCain's beady political eyes can't distinguish the difference between a lone wolf who shouted out an allegiance to three competing bitter radical Islamic enemy cells and a coordinated ISIS attack