Muslim Murderers Were Not on the No-Fly List
President Obama said Saturday that it is “insane” that people who are not allowed to fly on planes are allowed to buy guns.
Obama said the following in his weekly address.
“Right now, people on the No-Fly list can walk into a store and buy a gun. That is insane. If you’re too dangerous to board a plane, you’re too dangerous, by definition, to buy a gun.
“And so I’m calling on Congress to close this loophole, now. We may not be able to prevent every tragedy, but — at a bare minimum — we shouldn’t be making it so easy for potential terrorists or criminals to get their hands on a gun that they could use against Americans.”
It seems to me that if President Obama knew of this “loophole,” he should have brought it up earlier. If he didn’t know about it, he should have if he believes it’s an important method to stop terrorism.
But here are a few problems with closing the No-Fly list loophole. First, the two Muslim murderers — Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik– weren’t on the No-Fly list. Obama was throwing a bone to the anti-Second Amendment freaks with this new proposal. He needed some “gun control” sop for them to be pacified.
Second, if they had been on the No-Fly list, it wouldn’t have stopped them from getting guns illegally. People who are planning to murder don’t care about laws. In fact, such a law might tip off potential terrorists.
Third, if there’s enough evidence to put someone on the No-Fly list, maybe it’s time to do some additional investigation.
Fourth, as more information comes out, we’re learning that Farook’s wife got into the United States with falsified documents. Islamists are good at finding loopholes and developing ways to get around closed loopholes.
Fifth, what would stop the government from putting anyone who speaks against the government (for whatever reason) on the No-Fly list? You or I could be put on the list with no “due process.” It’s happened to lots of people.
“In July 2014, the Huffington Post reported that the no-fly list was so imprecise that people who weren’t on it were nearly denied flights via ‘false positives’ on identification at airports. HuffPo described the list as being as ‘imperfect as the intelligence officials tasked with doing it.’ And this squares perfectly with the Washington Post report that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) was on the list by happenstance in 2004.” (H/T: Breitbart)
Sixth, ISIS is recruiting in the United States. There’s an almost 100% chance that none of these recruits is on the No-Fly list:
“ISIS mostly uses peer-to-peer recruiting with 64% of the US ISIS recruits acting in 15 clusters, the largest being a group of 11 men and women from Minneapolis ‘who were in contact with Abdi Nur, a fellow Minnesotan who has joined ISIS in Syria.’ While social media is key to recruitment ISIS has also evaded attention by using encryption devices and/or directing communications through wives ‘as a way to avoid detection by the U.S. intelligence.'”
There’s another problem that doesn’t seem to have bothered the Obama administration — terrorists serving as employees at the Department of Homeland Security:
“At least 72 employees at the Department of Homeland Security are listed on the U.S. terrorist watch list, according to a Democratic lawmaker.
“Rep. Stephen Lynch (D., Mass.) disclosed that a congressional investigation recently found that at least 72 people working at DHS also were on the terrorist watch list.'” (H/T: Free Beacon)
AWR Hawkins writes, “The bottom line — adding the no-fly list to background checks would not have prevented San Bernardino attack, but it could provide one more barrier between law-abiding citizens and the guns they need for self-defense.”