Right: a bulldozer moves piles of confiscated guns toward a crushing point in Australia during the buyback that followed the Port Arthur murders. American gun control lobbyists want similar action taken in the USA.
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Arguments against suspected terrorists being banned from buying guns
1. The right to bear arms is guaranteed under the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
Supporters of the right of each citizen of the United States to own a firearm claim that the strongest guarantee of this supposed right is the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: 'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'
Those who argue that this Amendment includes not merely a right for states to have armies (here composed of citizen militia) but also a more general right for individual citizens to carry arms in self-defence (including self-defence against a tyrannical government) frequently cite some of the views expressed by the Framers of the United States Constitution.
One of these was George Mason, who stated, 'History has demonstrated that the most effective way to enslave a people is to disarm them.' Similarly Patrick Henry has been quoted as saying, '[T]he great object is that every man be armed .... Everyone who is able may have a gun.' The last observation is frequently quoted as it appears to stress the importance of individuals being able to carry arms.
In 1994, Constitutional scholar, David Vandercoy, Professor of Law, Valparaiso University School of Law, concluded that the intention of the Second Amendment was that 'the common public purpose of preserving freedom would be served by protecting each individual's right to arms.'
A recent Supreme Court ruling has confirmed that the right to bear arms is held by individuals rather than state-orchestrated militia.
On June 26, 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller (PDF), the United States Supreme Court issued its first decision since 1939 interpreting the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court ruled that the Second Amendment to the Constitution confers an individual right to possess a firearm for traditionally lawful purposes such as self-defence. It also ruled that two District of Columbia provisions, one that banned handguns and one that required lawful firearms in the home to be disassembled or trigger-locked, violate this right.
The extent to which individual gun ownership has historically been linked to the United States' nation-founding core values means that all attempts to regulate gun ownership tend to be construed as an attack on personal freedom.
In January, 2016, President Obama required gun sellers to institute more rigorous background checks. These were condemned in terms of an attack on individual freedom. House Speaker Paul Ryan stated, 'The president has never respected the right to safe and legal gun ownership that our nation has valued since its founding... His words and actions amount to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty.'
2. Those on suspected terrorist lists have been convicted of no wrongdoing. They are only considered likely to commit a terrorist outrage
Those who oppose the prevention of people on suspected terrorist lists from legally buying guns argue that it is unjust to restrict the freedoms of individuals who have not been proven to have committed a crime.
This position has been put by Charles C.W. Cooke, editor of National Review Online. Cooke has stated, 'In free countries such as the United States, we insist that the government distinguish between those who are "suspected" of lawbreaking and those who have been arrested, charged, convicted, or - at the very least - named in a time-limited warrant that has been signed by a judge.'
Cooke continued, 'It is for this reason that we are happy to detain those who have been accused of, or charged with, a crime, but do not allow our authorities to arbitrarily imprison those they merely believe are worth watching. It is for this reason that we are comfortable with locking up or imposing penalties upon those who have been found guilty in a court of law, but refrain from doing either of those things on the basis of mere rumour or mistrust. And it is for this reason that we are prepared to inflict permanent restrictions on those who have been convicted of serious crimes, but insist that the innocent must enjoy their full complement of rights.'
Cooke has concluded in regard to his opponents, that when Democrats 'argue that nobody on the "terror watch list" should be permitted to buy a gun, they are saying in effect that the government should have the power to deprive you of your enumerated constitutional rights purely by entering your name into a database.'
A similar point has been made on December 7, 2015, by Hina Shamsi, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) National Security Project. Mr Shami stated, '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.'
3. There are an unjustifiably large number of people on these lists
The exact number of people on the no-fly list, and the criteria used to put them there, are state secrets, although past travel to certain countries, social media postings, drug use and human error are believed to be factors.
A recurring problem is that people with similar names to suspected individuals have been included on the no-fly list. This is a marked problem given frequent imprecise English translations from languages such as Arabic.
Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican representative for Florida, has stated, 'The majority of the people on the no-fly list are oftentimes people that just basically have the same name as somebody else, who doesn't belong on the no-fly list.'
Drawn up by the FBI in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the no-fly list is widely held in disrepute. It contains 700,000 names, according to one estimate, and has mistakenly included infants, US military veterans and politicians including Edward Kennedy and John Lewis. Critics describe it as unwieldy, unfocused and inflated.
Opponents of the list argue that until the manner of its compilation is reformed it should not be used to curtail freedoms. Tim Sparapani, a privacy consultant at SPQR Strategies, has stated, 'It's better for the government to focus on known terrorists and have a tiny list than have a bloated list that comprises hundreds of thousands of individuals and diverts attention and resources away from the target.'
The criteria for inclusion on the terrorist watch list have been widely criticised. In 2013 the guidelines for the compilation and use of the terrorist watch list were leaked. They included the admission that there may be circumstances were people were included on the list without the basis of 'reasonable suspicion' being met. The following advice was given, '[I]n such situations, the nominating agency can ensure that the information provided is an accurate representation of the information obtained.' Critics have noted that all this asks for is that inadequate information be fully reported.
It has also been noted that the growing number of people on these lists have no genuine means of redress. They cannot effectively challenge their inclusion on these lists.
On December 7, 2015, Hina Shamsi, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) National Security Project stated, 'Unfortunately, the government's new redress process still falls far short of constitutional requirements. In our case, it refuses to provide meaningful notice of the reasons our clients are blacklisted, the basis for those reasons, and a hearing before a neutral decision-maker.'
Additional problems have been noted with the tardy manner in which those needing to be removed from the list have their names deleted. The federal inspector general's office found in 2014 that the FBI was taking too long to remove some names from lists after investigations or suspicion ended. An inspector general report found that 15 percent of people who were previously under investigation, and then cleared, were not removed promptly by the FBI.
4. Many of those on the terror watch list can already be prevented by the federal government from purchasing a gun.
When an individual attempts to purchase a firearm, the National Criminal Background Check System checks the Known and Appropriately Suspected (KST) file-which is taken from the terror watch list-for a possible match. If the individual in question is on the list, then he or she is marked for 'further review' and cannot purchase the firearm if 'a felon, adjudicated to be mentally ill, a fugitive from justice, an illegal immigrant, or prohibited from making gun purchases for another statutory reason'. Since 2004, 212 United States persons named as suspected terrorists on the list failed gun background checks, according to the Government Accountability Office report.
For those who claim that this is a very small number of people to have been banned from buying a gun, critics of stricter limits argue that the number may say more about the imperfect nature of the 'suspected' terrorist list. It is likely that many on this list were allowed to purchase a gun because background checks revealed no legitimate reason why they should be prevented from doing so. A 2009 United States Justice Department audit showed that 35 percent of the people on the list were 'associated with FBI cases that did not contain current international terrorist or domestic terrorism designations' and should have been removed from the list.
However, it has also been noted that most of those on the terrorist watch list are not eligible to purchase guns legally in the United States. With few exceptions, only United States citizens and legal residents in the country on immigrant visas can buy a gun. The FBI estimates that less than one percent of people on watch lists are United States persons, meaning citizens or those living legally in the United States.
The number is imprecise because government terror watch lists are not public, and federal officials have been reluctant to say how many Americans are on the no-fly list. The number also fluctuates as officials add and remove suspected terrorists from the list - which in some cases is done when a list error is discovered. However, the FBI estimates there are about one million total identities on its consolidated terror watch list and 5,000 or fewer of those people - about 0.5 percent - are United States citizens or legal residents.
5. Banning those on these lists from buying guns would warn them of their suspect status
Those who oppose banning those on the terrorist watch list or the no-fly list from buying guns argue that doing so may actually prove counter-productive and increase the risk posed to the population at large.
Martin Reardon, a former chief of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Operations Center, has claimed, 'closing this loophole really won't make a difference.'
It has been suggested that the potential terrorist, if blocked when attempting to buy a gun, would probably then proceed to buy the gun illegally on the black market. This would mean that the FBI would then be unlikely to have any record of what was bought or by whom.
Currently, though the FBI cannot prevent those on the terrorist watch list from buying a gun, they are aware of the purchase and can monitor the case further.
Martin Reardon explained, '[The agent can] go to the gun store and ask what is it a person is trying to buy? Was there anyone else with them? What did he say? Things like that.'
According to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office, people on the terrorist watch list have tried to buy a gun through a federally licensed dealer almost 2,500 times in the past 10 years; they've been approved in 91 percent of cases. This means that at the least the FBI is aware that they are armed and can keep them under closer surveillance.
If the gun is bought on the black market because the original legal purchase has been blocked, then the buyer is now aware that he or she is under observation and is likely to proceed with even greater care in whatever terrorist activity is being planned. In 2015, 244 background checks involved people on the list. The director of the Terrorist Screening Center from 2009 to 2013 claims, 'It would absolutely, totally ruin the cases that they've got...If a guy knows that he's watch-listed, he's going to act differently.'