Obama Proposes Taking Away Constitutional Rights Based on Browser History
Jon Stokes 06.03.16
This is not a clickbait headline. This is an actual, real thing that the president just proposed in the second half of this PBS Newshour video:
Starting at the 1:57 mark, Obama says:
I just came from a meeting, today, in the situation room, in which I’ve got people who we know have been on ISIL websites living here in the United States — US citizens. And we’re allowed to put them on the no fly list when it comes to airlines, but because of the National Rifle Association I cannot prohibit those people from buying guns!
This is somebody who is a known ISIL sympathizer, and if he wants to walk into a gun store or a gun show right now, and buy as many weapons and ammo as he can, nothing’s prohibiting him from doing that, even though the FBI knows who that person is.
In the Heller decision, the Supreme Court has recognized gun ownership as an individual constitutional right. You may not like it, but it’s settled case law at this point.
This means that Obama has just complained that he cannot restrict a citizen’s constitutional right based on the FBI’s (likely warrantless) knowledge of their browser history.
I could go on about the other problems with his reply to the gentleman who asked the question, like the fact that he opened with the oft-repeated falsehood that the same folks who have praised Australia’s gun confiscation as a model for the US nonetheless “don’t want to take away your guns.” But I’ll shut the rant down here because I can’t get over the cavalier attitude to civil liberties on the part of both the president and the public.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is how Obama earned the title of World’s Greatest Gun Salesman.
Everyone who believes that their constitutional rights are under threat from a government that does not respect the rule of law will have that belief confirmed by this video.
