Democratic Party frontrunner Hillary Clinton chastised congressional Republicans for failing to ban “potential terrorists” from obtaining firearms, moments after declaring, “We cannot allow terrorists to intimidate us into abandoning our values.”
With her Twitter account parroting her speech on combating terrorism in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Clinton declared:
"We cannot allow terrorists to intimidate us into abandoning our values…that is not who we are as Americans. We are better than that."
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) December 15, 2015
Then she turned her attacks away from terrorism and toward the GOP for their refusal to deny Americans on the “no-fly” list their Second Amendment rights:
"It defies common sense that Republicans in Congress refuse to make it harder for potential terrorists to buy guns." —Hillary
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) December 15, 2015
"I have news for [Republicans]—terrorists use guns to kill Americans. I think we should make it harder for them from to do that." —Hillary
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) December 15, 2015
"I have this old fashioned idea that we elect a president to keep us safe…I’m not going to let the gun lobby tell me that’s not right."
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) December 15, 2015
It’s not just Republicans who oppose the flawed “no-fly” list being used to deny Americans their Second Amendment rights; the American Civil Liberties Union opposes it as well.
Hina Shamsi, Director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, penned a piece entitled, “Until the No Fly List Is Fixed, It Shouldn’t Be Used to Restrict People’s Freedoms,” which argued the same position as Republicans.
The ACLU sided with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Republicans, who defeated an effort to enact legislation Clinton is calling for. Shamsi wrote:
We filed the suit in June 2010 on behalf of 10 U.S. citizens and permanent residents who the government banned from flying to or from the U.S. or over American airspace. (Three more people later joined the suit.) Our clients, among them four U.S. military veterans, were never told why they were on the list or given a reasonable opportunity to get off it. Some were stranded abroad, unable to come home…
The government has emphasized that it is making predictive judgments that people like our clients — who have never been charged let alone convicted of a crime — might nevertheless pose a threat. That’s a perilous thing for it to do. As we’ve told the court based on evidence from experts, these kinds of predictions guarantee a high risk of error. If the government is going to predict that Americans pose a threat and blacklist them, that’s even more reason for the fundamental safeguards we seek.
We disagree with Speaker Ryan about many things. But he’s right that people in this country have due process rights. We want to see them respected.