On November 22 former Obama advisor David Axelrod tweeted that the refusal to expand gun control in the wake of the Paris attacks shows that the Republican caucus fears the NRA more than they fear ISIS.
Axelrod did not address the fact that restrictive gun controls and all-out gun bans in France proved impotent to prevent terrorists from acquiring guns. Yet those same gun controls did guarantee that law-abiding citizens were defenseless as the attack unfolded.
Axelrod tweeted, “[The] only explanation for allowing people on terrorist watch list to buy guns is pols who fear NRA more the ISIS.” In so doing he admitted he was referencing statements he made on This Week With George Stephanopoulos, where his actual words were, “The Republican caucus is more frightened as a political matter of the NRA than they are of ISIS.”
Axelrod suggested this fear of the NRA prevents Republicans from expanding background checks to cover people on the no-fly list.
He did not mention the Huffington Post’s 2014 report showing the no-fly list is imprecise and can easily contain the names of innocents included because of a disgruntled neighbor or behavior that an onlooker misinterprets.
The imprecision of the list was clearly demonstrated in 2004 when Senator Ted Kennedy’s name was included among those barred from commercial flight. And it was on display for all to see again in 2005 when a “false positive” on an ID resulted in “a 4-year-old boy nearly [being] barred from boarding a plane to visit his grandmother.”
Because of such problems, the HuffPo contends that an innocent individual can end up on a list by just being “unlucky.”
Why should Second Amendment rights be subjected to the parameters of a list that does not differentiate between a 4-year-old visiting his grandmother and a terrorist?
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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