Wednesday, May 20, 2009

No Fly No Buy

David Codrea's latest GRE is on Carolyn McCarthy and her plan (HR 2401) to deny American citizens their Constitutionally guaranteed rights without being charged with any crime or facing any kind of trial.

To increase public safety and reduce the threat to domestic security by including persons who may be prevented from boarding an aircraft in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and for other purposes.

In other words, if your name appears on the No Fly list you will be denied the right to keep and bear arms. As David points out, the list is far from perfect: Teddy Kennedy himself was affected by this when his name appeared on the list-

While he worked to clear himself, Kennedy kept having to wait in terminals at Reagan National, Boston's Logan International and at least one other airport, his staff said. All of the flights were on US Airways. When the senator checked in at the counter, airline employees told him they could not issue him a boarding pass because he appeared on the list. Kennedy was delayed until a supervisor could be summoned to identify him and give approval for him to board the plane.

Even though he's a famous US Senator, it still took him three weeks to have his name (which had been used as an alias by a terrorist apparently) removed from the list. What do you suppose it would take- in time and effort- to have your name taken off the list and have your seized firearms returned to you? Under such circumstances I would say that three months would be an overly optimistic evaluation.

One last thing, McCarthy does know she's a member of Congress in America doesn't she?

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