Exercising the Right
Scary Stalker Shot
Valdosta Today reported on August 23 about an incident in southern Georgia involving a man being followed home by a dangerous criminal with bad intentions. Police say that 25-year-old Lyndon Williams followed a man who left his place of employment and was returning home. Williams drove behind the victim, who was completely unaware that he was being followed. Once the victim parked in his driveway, Williams darted out of his vehicle and ran up to the man with a handgun drawn in an apparent attempt to rob him. Thankfully, the victim had his own handgun, and shot Williams before Williams was able to fire his gun. Valdosta Today reported that police had concluded their investigation and determined that the victim acted lawfully, and the shooting was a justified case of self-defense.
FBI “Terror Watch List” May Be Used to Strip Gun Rights
Prominent gun-rights advocate John Lott and Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) co-authored a September 4 op-ed in the Washington Times that squarely took aim at the FBI and its so-called terror watch list. Lott and Massie warned the list might be used to make an end-run around the Second Amendment. The editorial was entitled “FBI abuses ‘no-fly list’ to infringe on Second Amendment rights,” and explained that the no-fly list, which had its origins in the early years of the post-9/11 “war on terror,” has grown to an astronomical two million names! Democrats have long called for banning anyone who is on the list from being able to buy guns and, if enacted, such a law could end up stripping two million Americans of their gun rights. As Lott and Massie explained, “being on the watch list doesn’t mean that you are guilty of anything. You can be on the list simply because the FBI wants to interview you about someone you might know. As of 2014, about 40 percent of people on the watch list were under ‘reasonable suspicion’ despite having ‘no affiliation with known terrorist groups.’ People can get nominated for the list by various government agencies, and no oversight agency exists to ensure that these additions are justified.”
Lott and Massie named high-profile Democrats, such as Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and former President Barack Obama, who have called for banning gun sales to people on the list. Lott and Massie also detailed many common problems with the list, including “false positives” by which a person with a similar name to someone on the list can end up in legal limbo. Lott and Massie drew parallels to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which has its own share of problems. They wrote, “Since the NICS background checks began in 1994, there have been 3.8 million initial denials. In 2017 alone, there were 112,000 initial denials for supposedly prohibited purchases. But, by June of the following year, the federal government had only prosecuted twelve people for trying to buy a gun. Almost all the cases were dropped upon further review. The simple reason for this is that they were mistakes — in other words, they weren’t real cases.”
JBS Member or ShopJBS.org Customer?
Sign in with your ShopJBS.org account username and password or use that login to subscribe.
Subscribe Now
- 24 Issues Per Year
- Digital Edition Access
- Exclusive Subscriber Content
- Audio provided for all articles
- Unlimited access to past issues
- Cancel anytime.
- Renews automatically
Subscribe Now
- 24 Issues Per Year
- Print edition delivery (USA)
*Available Outside USA - Digital Edition Access
- Exclusive Subscriber Content
- Audio provided for all articles
- Unlimited access to past issues
- Cancel anytime.
- Renews automatically