It's amazing that there are people who actually think people on terrorist watch lists should be allowed to buy guns
Yup. As I've said elsewhere, if it's proper for the government to say that a person who has psychological problems can't purchase a gun (and I don't think anyone argues against this), why wouldn't it be proper for the government to say that a person who has been placed on a terror watch list can't purchase a gun?
Plenty of people, including myself, believe that psychological problems should not of themselves be enough to keep someone from legally purchasing a gun. We shouldn't be depriving people of things merely based on a diagnosis.
I don't think being on a terror watch list should keep someone from being able to buy a gun, first because that means depriving someone of something considered a right without due process. If there were more of a limited process of putting people on this list, then perhaps, but there's also the problem that it would alert the person that they are on the watchlist and - if they are of that tiny percentage of people on the watchlist who are actual terrorists - they would find another way to kill people instead. If they are on a watchlist, you want to watch what they do.
This guy who shot up people in Orlando was not even any longer on a terror watch list when this happened. But if it's true as been reported that he had been guilty of domestic violence and threatening people in the past few years, I think that should have been enough to keep him from getting a gun.
The person who sold him a gun (legally), though, had no way of knowing about his alleged history of domestic disputes and being a menace to society because he wasn't required to run a background check. Thanks NRA. I don't own a gun so I don't know the gun laws, but as for the person who sold him the gun, could the owner have legally run a background check on his own, or is that, too, an "infriiiingement?"
Having said that, isn't being labeled with domestic battery and having a history of threatening people, a diagnosis? Surely there's some psychological term for these criminal behaviors.
Also, medical/psychological diagnoses prevent people from exercising other "constitutional rights" all the time: should blind/deaf/handicapped people be allowed to drive a car? Should pedophiles and those on the sex offender registry be allowed to teach in schools? Should employers not be allowed to test their employees for drugs by requiring them to pass a drug test since some applicants may be diagnosed as having an alcohol or drug problem/addiction?
