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No Fly, No Buy a bad idea
John Judkins Contributing columnist
Once again a terrible tragedy has occurred in our nation, and once again politicians are clamoring to make new laws restricting gun ownership in America. On Sunday, March 28, former white house chief of staff and former mayor of Chicago Rham Emmanuel appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and proposed several potential new gun control measures. The most concerning of these proposed measures was the No Fly, No Buy proposal.
I firmly believe such a law would violate every American’s constitutional right to due process of law. Under the proposed ban, any person whose name appears on the Federal No Fly List would not be allowed to purchase a gun. The No Fly List is a list of names created by the Terrorist Screening Center, a branch of the FBI. The original list was created shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the list is so secret that the FBI and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) denied tha
A closer look at free speech
The First Amendment, in part, says: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.”
For many years the protections of the Bill of Rights, including the protection of freedom of speech, only restricted the power of the federal government. States were at liberty to deny due process, cruelly and unusually punish people, and restrict gun ownership for whomever they chose. Massachusetts had a state-established religion until 1833. Fortunately, with the combination of the 14th Amendment and a few Supreme Court cases, most of the protections of the Bill of Rights, including freedom of speech, now apply to both state and federal governments.