The title of the diary is somewhat incorrect. To be fully accurate yesterday and December 4, 2015 prove that Republicans "Freedom" arguments are lies. Because for more than a decade, Republicans have been hypocrites by advocating for unregulated, widespread access to guns while restricting a fundamental right of thousands of Americans.
In justification of his pathetic, NRA-written amendment, John Cornyn said:
“We ought to be asking ourselves if there are those in this chamber and this body who believe you can deny American citizens their constitutional rights without due process of law based on a secret list that the government maintains,” he said, later questioning whether lawmakers would use the same justification to limit other freedoms. “This is really surreal to me.”
The answer to his question is: YES! All of them in point of fact. For the past thirteen years the Senate has passed budgets to maintain and expand an agency dedicated to restricting some Americans from exercising a fundamental right . . . The right to interstate travel. For 13 years, the government has denied, with little to no resistance from the Congress, the right of some Americans to board a plane and fly domestically.
This is what has been mind-boggling to me about this whole debate. For thirteen years, the U.S. government has created (with a fucking PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE - Homeland Security Presidential Directive-6 (HSPD-6)) and maintained the Terrorist Screening Center. The Terrorist Screening Center, part of the FBI, controls the various terrorist watchlists, including the "no-fly list". The no-fly list has expanded from 10,000 people in 2011 to 47,000 people in 2013.
But you may say that nobody has a right to fly on an airplane. . . even Mark Sumner said today:
Gun rights advocates might maintain that the difference is that ownership of guns is enshrined in the 2nd Amendment, and that—like it or not—recent Supreme Court decisions have clarified the right to individual ownership. Airplanes? Not a right.
Well, Mark is partially right and partially wrong. The Supreme Court has never said that a person has a right to board and fly on a commercial airline, but then again the Supreme Court has never said that a person has a right to purchase a gun! The only time Scalia even uses the word "purchase" in D.C. v. Heller (2008) is in footnote and he never uses "buy".
The right to fly a plane for a domestic flight is part and parcel of the right to interstate travel. Denying a person the right to fly on a plane does not completely prevent someone travel interstate; a person could take a bus or a train or boat or s/he could drive or walk. Hell, the person could travel by balloon or horseback and still travel freely across state lines.
The same is true of guns. The right to purchase a gun is part and parcel of the right to keep and bear arms. Denying a person the ability to buy a gun does not completely prevent someone from keeping and bearing arms; a person could use the guns that s/he currently owns or borrow a gun from a friend or institution (like a gun range).
Nobody would disagree though with the statement that denying a person the ability to get on a plane severely restricts the right to travel just as denying a person the ability to purchase a firearm severely restricts the right to keep and bear arms.
This diary attempts to knock down the argument that Republicans have consistently made since Sen. Feinstein first made this proposal. As the diary shows, the Republicans don't care about freedom or the Constitution. If they did, they would have stopped the no-fly list. All the Republicans care about are guns and not the Second Amendment. They care only about GUNS - and what guns mean to their most ardent constituents and their most consistent donors.
Tl;dr: Republicans "Freedom" argument with regards to Feinstein's "no fly, no buy" amendment are bullshit lies because the Republicans have allowed the no-fly list to restrict the fundamental right to interstate travel without making any protest.