Alaska Congressman Don Young doesn’t think much of the proposal to bar people on the no-fly list from buying guns.
“Those that are talking about – what they’re doing is against the Constitution,” he said on the House floor Thursday. “And I will fight until my dying breath to make sure that we have the ability to retain the Second Amendment.”
President Obama pitched the idea last week from the Oval Office as a matter of common sense.
“Right now people on the no-fly list can walk into a store and buy a gun. That’s insane,” Obama said. “If you’re too dangerous to board a plane, you’re too dangerous by definition to buy a gun.”
But Young says the no-fly list includes people who aren’t dangerous.
“I, personally, myself, have been on the (no) fly list,” he said. “It took me six months to get off of it. They didn’t tell me who put me on it, why I was put on it and what was the result from. Six months!”
The incident dates back to 2004, when Young said he was questioned before boarding a flight because his name was similar to a suspected bad guy.
The no-fly list is classified, but by some accounts more than 40,000 people are on it, and a few hundred are U.S. citizens. Young says the FBI is already notified when someone on the list tries to buy a gun.
“Yes, I am an NRA board member. But to have people say that terrorists are running around buying guns is an out-right lie,” he said.
The director of the FBI said this week that the background checks required for guns sold at stores do give the agency a chance to stop a sale, but he said a buyer’s name on the no-fly list isn’t a sufficient reason.
In 2010, the Government Accountability Office found that most terrorist-watchlist suspects who undergo the background check are cleared to buy their firearms.
Liz Ruskin is the Washington, D.C., correspondent at Alaska Public Media. Reach her at lruskin@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Liz here.
