BrianGarst.com

Despite the landmark victory in the Heller case, the constitutional right to bear arms for defensive purposes is still constantly under assault.  New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg recently testified in the Senate over a supposed “terror gap” in gun laws.

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg told a Senate panel Wednesday that he strongly supports congressional efforts to close a “terror gap” in the nation’s gun laws, which currently allow persons on a federal terrorist watch list to buy guns and explosives legally in the United States.

Testifying before the Senate Homeland Security Committee in the wake of the latest alleged terrorist plot against his city, Bloomberg (I) pointed to a new Government Accountability Office report showing that individuals on the terrorist watch list were able to buy firearms and explosives from licensed U.S. dealers 1,119 times over the past six years.

“That is a serious and dangerous breach of national security,” Bloomberg testified. The FBI should have the authority to block such sales, “but right now, they don’t,” he said. “It is time to close this ‘terror gap’ in our gun laws.”

It’s not hard to sympathize with the national security argument here, but I think mayor Bloomberg is wrong for several reasons.

First of all, the no-fly list is notoriously problematic. The list contains over 1 million names, all of which are most certainly not terrorists. Moreover, there is a huge difference between flying and owning a gun. That difference rests primarily with the fact that the latter is an expressly granted constitutional right. Rescinding such rights cannot be done merely by adding someone’s name to a list. If that’s all it takes to void the constitution, then this is no longer a nation of law.

Besides the fact that it’s unconstitutional and places a huge burden on the likely hundreds of thousands of Americans who have found themselves on that list despite lacking any terrorist sympathies, it wouldn’t offer any meaningful protection anyway. The idea that real terrorists wouldn’t be able to purchase guns on the black market is absurd. The end result would be that the people you actually want to restrict access to still get weapons, while law-abiding citizens are forced to deal with another (unconstitutional) burden on their basic freedoms.

This is not the first time an effort has been made to deny Second Amendment rights to citizens arbitrarily placed on some list. Assuming it fails, one can only hope it’s the last.

constitution