Democrats are currently trying to ban American citizens named on the so-called “terror watch list” from purchasing firearms. Of course, it doesn’t matter to Democrats that this would strip Americans of their Fifth Amendment right to due process and subsequently their Second Amendment right to purchase a firearm.
Moreover, being a “suspect” of terrorism by the United States government these days is much easier than you might think.
The list exploded under President Obama, but began bloating on President George W. Bush’s watch. In 2014, the Intercept reported “that nearly half of the people on the government’s shared list of terror suspects are marked as having ‘no recognized terrorist group affiliation.’”
This is clearly a problem, and should bring pause to anyone eager to strip these people of their rights so quickly.
Here’s a list of 13 people wrongfully named to the terror watch list, journalists and Cub Scouts included:
1. Democratic Congressmen John Lewis
Civil Rights icon John Lewis, who is ironically leading the “Democratic sit-in,” an effort to ban people like him from his Second Amendment right, was apparently added to the terror watch list in 2004. The Daily Caller reports:
“Press accounts from 2004 to 2008 reveal that Lewis’ name somehow ended up on the federal no-fly list, and remained there for years despite his best efforts to get it off. In 2004, he claimed he was stopped 35 to 40 times in a single year by airport personnel who tried to keep him from flying.”
2. Senator Ted Kennedy
As reported by The Washington Post, Kennedy claimed that he “was stopped and questioned at airports on the East Coast five times in March [of 2004] because his name appeared on the government’s secret ‘no-fly’ list.”
3. CNN Reporter Drew Griffin
Griffin told CNN that he was placed on the terror watch list “shortly after I began a series of investigative reports critical of the TSA.”
4. 8-year-old Cub Scout Mikey Hicks and his father, who shares the same name
“Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal,” the boy’s mother told The New York Times. “A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked.”
5. Journalist Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard
Hayes, who is also a Fox News contributor, found out he was placed on the terror watchlist in 2014.
“I believe I got on the list because I took a trip to Turkey with my wife – a one-way flight into Istanbul. And then we flew out of Athens a couple weeks later,” he told NPR.
6. Lyman Latin, a disabled U.S. Marine veteran
According to The Intercept, Latin was named to the terror watch list and was subsequently “unable to get a Veterans Administration disability evaluation completed because he was blocked from flying from Egypt to the United States.”
7. 6-year-old Alyssa Thomas from Ohio
“A family in Ohio learned that their six-year-old daughter is on Homeland Security’s terror watch list when they attempted to make a flight from Cleveland to Minneapolis,” reported The New York Daily News in 2010.
8. A two-year-old child
As reported by The Huffington Post in 2012, an unnamed (for reasons of anonymity) two-year-child was classified as a suspected terrorist.
9. Former Air National Guard brigadier general, James Robinson
Robinson, who is “certified by the Transportation Security Administration to carry a weapon into the cockpit as part of the government’s defense program should a terrorist try to commandeer a plane,” was reported to be named to the terror watch list in 2008 by CNN.
“Shocking’s a good word; frustrating,” Robinson told CNN. “I’m carrying a weapon, flying a multimillion-dollar jet with passengers, but I’m still screened as, you know, on the terrorist watch list.”
The pilot added: “There’s going to come a point in time where everybody’s on the list.”
Because of the name mix-up on the part of the U.S. government, two other “James Robinsons” were added to the terror watch list, as well:
10. Third-grader James Robinson
11. Former U.S. attorney James Robinson
12. Actor David Nelson
CNN claims that late actor and producer, who starred on ABC’s “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” as a child, was added to the terror watch list.
13. Yusuf Islam, the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens
According to CNN: “In 2004, a Washington-bound United Airlines flight from London was diverted to Maine after officials discovered Yusuf Islam, the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens, was on board. Islam was denied entry into the U.S. and made to return to the U.K.”