Donald Trump doesn’t read TTAG. If the aspiring Commander-in-Chief read our post Here’s Why People on the “No Fly List” Should Be Able to Buy Guns, for example, he could’ve defended firearms freedom against the latest “common sense” assault on our gun rights. Then again, who am I kidding? Donald Trump is a populist. While he talks a good game on gun rights – now – his command of the facts on this or any other issue is tenuous. Actually, it’s worse than that. Check out this answer to George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week.  . . .

If we have an enemy of state, I don’t want to give him anything. I want to have him in jail, that’s what I want. I want to have him in jail. But if those people in Paris had guns in that room, it would have been a shootout and very few people would have been hurt by comparison to the number that were hurt . . .

If somebody is on a watch list and an enemy of state and we know it’s an enemy of state. I would keep them away, absolutely.

Once again, we commend Mr. Trump for defending our natural, civil and Constitutional right to defend ourselves by force of arms. [Full text of the interchange here.] And I couldn’t agree more with the Donald: if there’s sufficient evidence that an American or foreign national is a terrorist, they should be arrested, prosecuted and jailed. Access-to-guns problem solved.

But big ol’ brickbats for Trump for thinking it’s OK for unnamed, unaccountable bureaucrats to deem someone an “enemy of state” and then deny them their gun rights. Could that “No Guns for Enemies of the State” list include you, an average law-abiding gun owner who might just belong to the NRA? In a Clinton administration, sure! Why not? Liberals have already classified the NRA as a terrorist organization.

So who set ABC straight on the Trojan horse nature of anti-gun rights Senator Diane Feinstein’s attempt to “code terrorist loophole”? Why Dr. Ben “I Almost Hit My Mother in the Head with a Hammer” Carson, of course! CNN reports:

Carson said later on the same show that he’s concerned that “there are a lot of people on that watch list and they have no idea why they’re on that list and they’ve been trying to get their names off of it, and no one will give them information.”

“I am a big supporter of the Second Amendment, and I don’t want to deprive people unnecessarily of that. There needs to be better due process,” Carson said.

My man! As for the rest of the GOP pack, New Jersey Governor Chris “Prosecutor Prosecuting Prosecutorially” Christie wimped out. “I think these are state-by-state determinations, and they should be made state by state.” Ohio Gov. John Kasich pleaded ignorance on NBC’s Meet the Press. “First I’ve ever heard of it,” he demurred. And then added. “If we want to examine people who are on terrorist watch lists and not let them buy a gun, I mean, it’s something that ought to be considered.”

What does the Cruz say? The burning Bush? I can’t find those answers just now. But it would be most instructive, would it not?

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66 COMMENTS

  1. That’s a dumb ass idea! The watch list has too many errors and, once you are on it, getting off is nearly impossible. For those who don’t remember, Senator Ted Kennedy was added to it for some reason. It took him two years to get his name removed. The chances for an ordinary citizen are as near to zero as matters.

  2. There went my last tepid willingness to consider voting for him. Not going to rely on the courts to suss out awful public policy, and there is basically no due process safeguard to being placed on that list, nothing to stop a capricious, totalitarian-minded regime from just dumping most of the country on the no-fly list just to preclude legal gun ownership.

    For the record, I never considered him conservative, I considered him as an option to (pace “Game of Thrones”) “break the wheel”, whether he was a particularly good choice or not.

  4. I have never considered voting for Mr. Trump anyway, ( unless it’s him or Hillary) but that’s because in no way do I consider him a”conservative “.

    • Trump starts off good and then derails himself every time by talking like a fascist and he’s not even aware of it. Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of other people aren’t either.

      • That’s what worries me — not so much that Trump is running, but that so many people seem to have no problem with the truly alarming things he says amid all that bluster and BS.

        The only way he’d ever get my vote is if Hillary was on the other side of the ballot. I really hope we have a better choice than that.

        • Would you rather have a hands on president that’s not a good speaker but makes $h”t happen or a good speaking president that dose jack $h”t?

  5. I have NEVER put my SSN on a 4773, or any other paperwork involved in the sale/transfer of a firearm.
    It’s NOT required.
    Because non-citizens (who don’t have a SSN) can purchase firearms.

      • Correct. It is name based. Which is why people with the same or similar names have been bumped from flights multiple times because of misidentification.

    • I’d trust you with my life, bud! Unfortunately, CA isn’t too keen on independent thinkers like you and I. And the same goes for most of the Feds.

      (By the way we got multiple deer out of the swamp this weekend. Stories and exaggerations to follow.)

    • I’ve been told that you can do a LOT more damage with somebody’s driver’s license number than with their SSN.

  6. I feel like I am living in a real life Punk’ed episode. We will end up having this ass-hat or Hilary to vote for. Yay! Satan or Beelzebub, what a great choice!

  7. Time to wake up people, Trump is an enemy to freedom. He played a nice role of giving the left an opponent whose beliefs were as extreme as theirs, but he is no friend to our cause.

    • I still don’t get the feeling he is hostile to the second amendment at this point, not like Obama and Hilary, for instance. He just doesn’t seem to think before he pops off, which is a general trait of his.

      First, he needs to study up on the issues a bit. Second, he needs to learn to say “I don’t know” or “I’ll get back to you on that.”

      • I stand by the very first sentence that came into my head when I first heard that Donald Trump was running for President: “He seems a little more grown up than I remember, but the money has insulated him from reality, so, he hasn’t been playing grown up long enough to be a good president.”

        Of all the people on the stage in the last debate, I could see all of them serving some other purpose in government well. Except for him. Carson would make a good SCOTUS Justice. So would Cruz. Fiorina loses people because she actually has a brain. Trump is basically the Red version of the democrats’ “appeal to the stupid” gambit. Only a flaming retard doesn’t see through him. But, unfortunately, the unwashed masses on both sides of the political divide are dumb as shit…

  8. Without voicing my opinion one way or another, isn’t the “Terrorist Watch List” an entirely different and separate list then the “No-Fly List”? I believe the No-Fly list is just that, a list that supposedly bars individuals (or unfortunate people with the same name) from boarding a commercial flight. But an actual FBI “Terrorist Watch List is an actual database shared among various law enforcement agencies to warn about a suspected individual.

    • According to information developed during a lawsuit by an architect who made it on the list by going home to Asia to visit family that there actually seven different lists, and getting off one doesn’t mean you’ll get off the others. Lists are maintained by FBI, TSA, HOMELAND SECURITY, CIA, DIA, DEA, NCIS, and probably several others who’s acronyms I don’t know. Only two, so I understand, are kill lists, the rest are watch lists, and all go into the no-fly list.

  9. sorry, i don’t have a problem with that. i see the slippery slope but we can’t use that as basis to through out a law or ruling or we would have no laws. i see that as a bad thing, some don’t.

      • He started the sentence by apologizing.

        He knows he’s wrong and doesn’t care.

        Maybe I’ll put him on a list and see how he likes it?

        This concept defies the 4th and 5th amendments. That is the law that is being thrown out, he knows it, and he doesn’t care.

    • We can’t use the Constitution to throw out unconstitutional, tyrannical laws?

      Go home to North Korea, please.

    • What Trump is proposing here is actually very much like having no law. The way things are now, the things that disqualify a person from owning firearms are prescribed by law, and consist of bright-line tests like criminal convictions or being dishonorably discharged.

      What Trump is proposing would effectively mean the executive branch gets a veto. It needn’t be based on any published standard or articulate fact. They just say so, and that’s supposed to be good enough. That you write “terrorism” across the top of the list is just PR.

  10. “What does the Cruz say? The burning Bush? I can’t find those answers just now. But it would be most instructive, would it not?”

    I don’t have a quote, but I can guarantee that Cruz would get an A+ for his answer. Don’t really care what Jeb has to say.

    Please, God, don’t let Kelo decision-loving Big Government guy Trump get the nomination, or I’ll be forced to vote for him in the general.

  11. While we’re attacking the second, might as well get rid of that whole “Innocent until proven guilty” thing too.

    …for the children.

    O2

  12. Trump says a lot of crap that is just crazy and I wonder how much of it he really believes. I hope he’s not the only choice. Once again, I fear the presidential election will be about choosing the least evil candidate.

  13. We now have a presidential race in which the candidates, in order to sound tough to a scared electorate, start to offer proposals in which we trade freedom for a false sense of security.

    Mr. Trump would trade the constitutional rights of a citizen because some agent of the Federal government has reached a conclusion that this individual has terrorist leanings. With this unproven allegation, this individual is no longer able to board a commercial flight and now their second amendment rights would also be stripped away without any due process or even the right to confront their accuser.

    Senator Rubio appears to be heading down the same path with his argument against letting Syrian refugees legally enter this country with his analogy “if we let 100 in, and one is a bad guy…” This is the same flawed rhetoric that gun control advocates use – if we let 100 people purchase guns, one might be a bad guy, be mentally ill, etc. So what if we leave the other 99 unable to protect themselves and their family?

    • That’s a terrible comparison.

      American citizens have a RIGHT to keep and bear arms.

      Syrians DO NOT have a right to move to America.

      Americans have a RIGHT to determine who gets to move here.

      Syrians DO NOT have a right to move into a sovereign nation without that nation’s approval.

      In this case, you are the one who is trying to coerce Americans into giving up their right to decide who gets to immigrate here.

  14. This is all Obama-Alinsky bullshit.

    Don’t be fooled. There’s nothing more that the anti’s would love to have than anyone on a no-fly list not able to purchase guns, without having to account as to how someone was put on that list, of course.

  15. The political system has been hijacked by special interests. Anyone expecting representation from the system is dangerously asleep at the wheel.

  16. I’d love to know how many non-citizen are on that watch list and how many of those are living in the U.S. Then, I’d like to know, if they are a threat to Americans, why have they not had visas cancelled and been deported.

  17. “While he talks a good game on gun rights – now – his command of the facts on this or any other issue is tenuous.”

    Jar Jar Trump talks like a bombastic 4 year old. He has no command of any facts. Somebody is spoon feeding him his position on the 2nd amendment. Compare his written statements in press releases or on his campaign website or his rehearsed talking points in a debate with what comes out of his mouth in an interview. At least we know there is an adult in charge on firearms issues in his campaign. What he might do if he is allowed to scamper into the White House is anybody’s guess. What Jabba the Hutllery will do is a certainty (we will not like it).

    “If somebody is on a watch list and an enemy of state and we know it’s an enemy of state. I would keep them away, absolutely.”

    The federal government has lots of lists, a No Fly list, a Terror Watch list, a Presidential Kill list and on and on. Jar Jar wants to pretend the federal government is capable of making a list of real terrorists without allowing political considerations to distort the result. Consider the lists Jabba would come up with, if she made it into the White House ( we would really not like it).

    • “Jar Jar wants to pretend the federal government is capable of making a list of real terrorists without allowing political considerations to distort the result.”

      Jar Jar will just: “ask some of my friends on Wall Street.” Who claim to be smart. And since that is something Jar Jar is most certainly not, he believes them. So, Bloomberg and like minded banksters gets to decide who can own guns. Hey, it wouldn’t be Dystopia if it wasn’t Dystopian…

  18. Due process?

    Dr. Carson, this is modern America. There’s no such thing.

    I have to say though, for all the hoorah revolutionizing people talk about on gun boards, if this watch list with zero oversight and zero due process really did start taking away people’s Constitutional rights…that seriously would be the red line for many Americans, and justifiably so.

  19. In this country you don’t lose your fundamental rights without due process of law. That means a fair trial, not the whim of some anonymous bureaucrat.

    If the authorities had proof that people on the watch list were really terrorists, then they would prosecute them and put them in prison.

    • In this country you don’t lose your fundamental rights without due process of law. That means a fair trial, not the whim of some anonymous bureaucrat.

      You remember those days too, eh? I haven’t seen them since 2001-02, when the Patriot act, DHS and all these lists were created.

  20. Golly I’m so glad only one other person in the world has my name(that I know of). It’s not like the gubmint never makes a mistake donald. Yeah I for one want to know Ted’s op on this. The only candidate I(may) vote for with no hesitation…

  21. I propose we let the proponents of this idea make our arguments for us. We offer to concede the point if they are willing to deport any immigrants on the watch list immediately. After all, if they are “enemies of the state,” they shouldn’t be here. Since we have already determined they are dangerous enough to need watching, why not nip the problem in the bud and kick them out?

    The army of outraged civil rights attorneys will do our job for us.

    Of course, it’s irrational to expect consistency from irrational people.

    • >> We offer to concede the point if they are willing to deport any immigrants on the watch list immediately.

      Why limit it to immigrants? Might as well just cover the whole ground by stripping citizenship first if a citizen ends up on the list, then deporting them. If no-one takes them, well, that’s what Gitmo is there for, right?

    • I am currently an enthusiastic cook and nutrition student without a kitchen. This soup does sound like just what my soul needs, I am going to find the means to make it this week one way or another. I love the idea of using soaked nuts to &##a3cre9m&3;9; a dish. I can recommend the combination of broccoli, kale and almond cream soup, some much needed green on a grim winter afternoon in London. Thank you for sharing Sarah.

  22. If they are really “enemies of state” (a label that in and of itself reeks of fascism, by the way), and there’s proof of the same, then they should be denied RKBA by virtue of being in prison.

    If there’s no evidence to put them behind bars, then they’re not “enemies of state”. At best they’re suspects.

  23. Let me tell you something boys John Wayne is dead……I like Trump and if your waiting for the perfect candidate we’ll have hillary in the WH…….I’ll bet your one of the conservatives that didn’t vote for Romney. He didn’t meet all your requirements so instead we have Penocchio in the WH. I spent 2 years in Nam and find your weakass crap not suited to my Semper fi. Lead follow or get out of the way and right now your a road block or is that your point?

    • ….we’ll have hillary in the WH…

      Hilary, Trump, Chavez, Kim, Khamenei…. Honestly, who the heck cares? Once you hit dead zero, you can’t go lower. And none of the above rise above that on any issue. No different than picking favorites from a list of individual ebola viruses.

    • “Lead, follow or get out of the way” where?

      It’s folly to follow, and it’s criminal to lead, if the way leads into the abyss. And getting out of the way is not really an option if we’re all tied together by the same rope.

      What you have basically just said is that you’re offended that instead of eagerly sprinting where the “strong men” (i.e. sociopathic idiots with charisma) point, some people want to stop and think about where they’re actually going, and what good is there in it for them.

  24. I know that “the left” is so distorted and caricatured and the favorite punching bag on this site, but I’d like to point out that most hard left sources HATE the no-fly list and have reported on its abuses. Go look at past DemocracyNow (super leftist news outlet) coverage of how the government uses this to unaccountably harass people, especially leftist journalists. I think you’ll find that many people far to the left are very sympathetic to the idea that this will be used to unaccountably remove peoples’ rights.

    • The “hard left” hate those lists until they get in a position to decide who gets on them. Like Obama and Gitmo.

      The hard left, any left (perhaps not the very hardest, those guys do manage to make some sense. All three of them) believe the state can be a force for good. Or good at all. Once you reach that level of gullibility, there will always be possible states and leaders “good enough” to trust to only put “bad” people on such lists. Like scary gun owners etc.

      The “hard left” is in agreement with the “hard right” on wars as well, hence can never get done suggesting “we” should join “them.” Problem is, they are against current and recent wars because those happen not to be PC. While we’re against them because they presuppose a government large and well funded enough to fight a war. Which is why a straight forward litmus test to see if someone is truly anti war, and not just anti non-PC wars, is to ask them about the War Between The States / Civil War. Or, for that matter, WW1 or WW2.

      • >> The “hard left” hate those lists until they get in a position to decide who gets on them. Like Obama and Gitmo.

        Actually, Obama’s position on Gitmo has been consistently criticized largely by that very same “hard left”. Well, and libertarians, and libertarian-minded right-wingers like Ron Paul, but they’re an even smaller minority. Everyone else seems to be fine with the general idea of extrajudicial detention of “enemies of state”, even if unhappy about “excesses” (reminds me of 1930s in USSR: comrade Stalin similarly made a show of criticizing “excesses” in the obviously necessary and just struggle of NKVD against the hydra of counterrevolution).

        >> Problem is, they are against current and recent wars because those happen not to be PC. While we’re against them because they presuppose a government large and well funded enough to fight a war.

        It’s actually possible to be against those wars for both reasons (and half a dozen more).

        And it’s also possible to be pro-war without being pro-Gitmo.

      • I disagree that the far left is only against the current wars because they’re unpopular. There were many voices on the left critical of Iraq prior to going in. Many people who didn’t blindly accept the ‘smoking gun mushroom cloud’ bullsh*%’ of an excuse. It wasn’t substantially different from Reagan and Libya with the terrorist bombing in Germany as a pretext to bomb Libya. Assertions by the government that were nearly completely unchallenged in the mainstream media turned out to be fabrications. I happen to be very unsatisfied with Obama because, among other things, he failed to push hard enough to close Guantanamo, is nearly completely uncritical of Israel, and kills with no oversight with drones. His foreign policy (or actions. there doesn’t seem to be much policy) has been an extension of neocons and I think Hillary would be even worse. I find it difficult to understand the objection to a government large enough to prosecute wars. Isn’t that one government function that we can all accept as necessary? Certainly we can disagree on when to apply that, but how would we function without defense?

  25. My name is John E. Smith.
    My name was probably the first name added to that ridiculous list. That list is meaningless and useless because (last time I flew I was told) there was NO DESCRIPTIONS OF ANY KIND ASSOCIATED with the names on that list. No social security number, age, weight, height, race, sex, hair color, or eye color.

    If your skin color is white, black, brown, red, blue, green or invisible you WILL get flagged and detained for further inspection if your name is John Smith.

    If you are a 91 year old black man that is 4′ 4″ and weigh 72 lbs and you are traveling with a 22 year old white man that is 6′ 7″ and weigh 375 lbs and both of you are named John E. Smith… you are both the terrorist on the watch list because…. because they are stupid.

    TSA will wreck your day because they have NO EFFING CLUE who they are supposed to be looking for. I have a spotless criminal record. I’m so clean that I own NFA items (two suppressors withing the past 2 months). So clean that I drive for Fed Ex and can be trusted to transport narcotics and firearms on a daily basis. My criminal record is blank, yet my name is on a no-fly list? I don’t fly because I refuse to participate in this charade.

    The no-fly list is a meaningless “feel good” attempt at pretending they are in control of the unknown.
    Screw them. I’ll drive.

    • Truth be told, it wouldn’t be any less ridiculous if it had descriptions, dates of births, SSNs etc. It would have been more precise, but, fundamentally, when people talk about “no-fly list abuses”, they’re missing the point: the very existence of such a list is abuse of the Constitution, insofar as it is a blatant violation of the rights to due process.

  26. nothing happens in a vacuum , The Donald is giving his classic snap of the wrist answers… and once in a while hell have to go back and fine tune the details…hes brash and not a perfect candidate…by what we have become accustomed to, BUT he is the best bet for gun rights on the plate in the foreseeable future, we would be wise not to slight him and ad fuel to the antigunners arsenal. if push came to shove and hes the PREZ…he isn’t going to write any laws….he is going to ok them or veto them….he certainly wont be screwing with our rights behind congress’s back, like Obama is doing!!!!!!!!!!!

    • >> BUT he is the best bet for gun rights on the plate in the foreseeable future

      Much good your gun rights will do you in a society where you can be detained indefinitely without a court for being “enemy of state” (note: we’re already there, but the Donald seems to be itching to expand the scale of that much further).

      >> he certainly wont be screwing with our rights behind congress’s back, like Obama is doing!!!!!!!!!!!

      Yeah, he’d rather do it proudly in sight of the public, and then boast about it.

      (In case you haven’t been watching, he has already expressed a desire to fire a salvo of executive orders on the first day in office.)

      • You just trolled the shit out of every comment on this topic. Your failed attempt at trying to prove how wise you are, or a plea for attention is noted. Now move on … everyone on here is entitled to his/her opinion without some goddamn know it all trolling them.

  27. The way Barack is handling this country …. I am certain that I am on the list, as is every American Veteran alive today. We were trained to use a weapon in defense of this country so we obviously must be terrorists.

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