There have been a lot of article written in the last 24 hours about the potential problems that come along with the Collins bill.

Here is one of them.....

....banning no-fly list members from buying guns is not actually what the bill does. Rather, Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) amendment would expand the number of people whose gun purchases result in notifications to the FBI; and it would allow the Department of Justice to block people from buying guns if they have a "reasonable suspicion" that they represent a "threat to public safety."

We have no idea how the Department of Justice would use this power. In a Republican administration you could imagine the attorney general deciding not to block any gun purchases on these grounds. But even if DOJ chose to block every "known or suspected terrorist" in the Terrorist Screening Database, that'd apply to a very small number of people. "This list is reported to have included around 800,000 names as of September 2014," FiveThirtyEight’s Andrew Flowers notes, "of which only a tiny fraction (perhaps a few thousand) are American citizens."

How many try to buy guns? Well, last year about 244 tried to, and 223 were approved. By contrast, the FBI processed more than 23 million background checks last year. The 244 from suspected terrorists represent about 0.001 percent of the total. Even accounting for the fact that people on the watch list might be more inclined to use their weapons for nefarious purposes, there’s just no way that that will make a dent in the firearm homicide or suicide rates.

And that’s leaving aside the fact that Democrats’ proposal lacks basic due process protections, and would give the Justice Department a power that would probably be disproportionately applied to Muslims. Even if you don’t like anybody owning guns, the idea of restricting access beyond the norm for a particular religious minority is ugly.

As follow up reading, this is worth a look. 

The enormous problems with using the war on terror as the basis for gun control

The idea that government should prevent suspected terrorists from being able to buy guns seemed so obvious in the wake of the Orlando massacre that Donald Trump and Senate Democrats were in agreement about it.

But as Democrats have seen as they’ve tried to turn that idea into a bill that could get 60 votes in the Senate, what seems obvious in theory is a lot more complicated in practice. And the most bipartisan ideas might not be the best ones.

The "terror gap" debate has run right into the debate over surveillance and the war on terror — and splintered like a log in a wood chipper. Suddenly, liberal opinion-makers from Kevin Drum to Trevor Noah are against the Democrats’ proposal.

The reason is simple: If you give the government more power to ban terrorists from having guns, you’re reinforcing the power it has to define who counts as a terrorist.

That power is something of which both many liberals and many conservatives are deeply skeptical. They both worry that the government’s choices about who to target for surveillance and enforcement are unfair — even discriminatory. But they’re worried about discrimination against different populations — and that shapes their objections, and the alternatives they propose.

Whenever the war on terror meets gun control politics, the terms of the debate shift: Democrats and gun control advocates tend to believe that the threat is dire enough that it’s worth a little collateral damage to civil liberties, while Republicans don’t. In part, that’s because people who support gun control aren’t exactly worried about gun control policies being applied overbroadly: If the proposal keeps more guns off the streets than it’s supposed to, that suits them just fine.

What you need to remember, though, is that this isn’t a separate system getting created for gun control — it’s giving more power to the existing surveillance system. That surveillance system has shifted over time depending on what it’s being used for, and giving it the power to ban gun sales would probably lead it to evolve again.

The current Democratic gun proposal, for instance, would subject two categories of people to higher scrutiny: people on the watch list of "known or suspected terrorists," and people who have been investigated by the FBI in the last five years.

How the FBI conducts terrorism investigations has been hotly debated. And the history of watch lists show that they’re shaped at least as much by political pressures as by intelligence needs. So it's worth wondering how those political pressures might work if those tactics suddenly become the government's most powerful tool for preventing someone from owning a gun.

We have no idea who would actually get flagged for greater scrutiny when they applied for a gun. That’s because we have no idea who is actually on the "terrorism watch list." There’s absolutely no way for someone to find out if she's on it or not.

The ACLU has managed to win a little transparency when it comes to the no-fly list — one of the many lists drawn from the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), the list of 800,000 "known or suspected terrorists" that’s typically referred to as the master "terrorism watch list."

When the ACLU sued on behalf of 10 people who believed they were on the no-fly list and demanded to be told why — some of whom were actually stuck outside the US — the government attempted to argue that whether or not they were actually on the list counted as a "state secret."

Despite the victories on the no-fly list, though, "the government refuses to confirm or deny whether people are actually on the master watch list," says Hina Shamsi of the ACLU.

Without that basic starting point, it's impossible to know how many people have been watch-listed by mistake — or might have been legitimately watch-listed to begin with, but might be okay to remove now.

And since the terrorism records that are checked when someone goes through a gun-purchase background check are drawn from that master watch list, that means there’s no way of knowing who would be scrutinized for trying to buy a gun. Ironically, if the Democrats succeed in passing their "terror gap" proposals, attempting to buy a gun and being denied might be the only way for someone to find out for sure if he or she is being watched.

It wouldn’t be a confirmation that the person in question is currently on a particular watch list: Under the proposal, people who have been under investigation at any time in the last five years for terrorism are placed under scrutiny, even if they’re not on the list. And the government doesn't appear to be scrupulously committed to pruning down the list itself. Being acquitted of terrorism charges or having those charges dismissed is actually cited as a reason to put someone on the watch list — not a reason to take him off.

In other words, the proposal is guaranteed to sweep up people who the government has already determined, for sure, don’t pose a threat — and return them to scrutiny all over again.

In general, Republicans have gotten a little more skeptical of the government's national-security powers (and Democrats have gotten less so) now that the person wielding those powers is a Democrat. But their responses to Democrats’ gun proposals have shown on whose behalf, in particular, they’re concerned: law-abiding gun owners without any connection to "real" (i.e., foreign) terrorist activity.

For that reason, Republican compromise proposals have focused on adding more checks on who is prevented from buying a gun based on the watch list — not on adding checks to the watch list itself.

One proposal, supported by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and the NRA, would require a judge to decide within 72 hours if the watch-listed person should have his gun background check denied. Another, supported by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), would create a separate list of gun-banned terrorists, which would have to be approved by the secret FISA surveillance court.

Democrats have rejected both of those proposals as totally impractical. As Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) put it Thursday: "Due process is what’s killing us right now."

They’re probably right. It would probably be prohibitively difficult for the federal government to suddenly create a fast, standardized process related to the terrorism watch list — because, as far as we know, nothing like that is even close to existing right now.

But that signals bigger problems with the current state of national-security policies. Toomey’s proposal, for example, would add work to an already overworked and secretive FISA court — but the underlying problem is that the FISA court is already overworked and secretive.

..........The tension between using national-security systems for surveillance and using them for gun control is real. It’s perfectly logical: Systems change depending on what they’re being used for.

But the current state of national-security politics is that both parties are arguing over whether the system is being used to target the right people — who the real threats to America are — when, in fact, it might be the case that the system itself is a problem.

The individual right to recklessly own any weapon even If it endangers the right to life is the cancer that will destroy the republic. For when a form of government fails to secure the general welfare it ceases to be legitimate

The Man wrote:

Goose wrote:

The individual right to recklessly own any weapon even If it endangers the right to life is the cancer that will destroy the republic. For when a form of government fails to secure the general welfare it ceases to be legitimate

 
Individuals do not have the right to own 'any weapon'. Automatic weapons and assault weapons are illegal for individuals to own.

For the weapons that are generally termed "assault weapons", they for the most part are perfectly legal. The ban that covered most of them expired on Sept 13, 2004. 

Goose wrote:

The Man wrote:

Goose wrote:

The individual right to recklessly own any weapon even If it endangers the right to life is the cancer that will destroy the republic. For when a form of government fails to secure the general welfare it ceases to be legitimate

 
Individuals do not have the right to own 'any weapon'.  Automatic weapons and assault weapons are illegal for individuals to own.

 
Factually incorrect.
What a surprise

 
It's not incorrect, but please, do entertain us all and explain how you think so.

tennyson wrote:

So.... fix the problems. Nothing is cast in stone. 

Maybe tell the democrats to stop play games with the really stupid sit-ins and fix it!
This turned into a giant fund raising program for them. Nothing more.