Dec 08 2015
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) spoke on the Senate floor after Senate Democrats blocked his proposal barring known or suspected terrorists from purchasing a firearm and authorizing the Justice Department to investigate the individual.
Excerpts of Sen. Cornyn’s remarks are below, and video of his speech can be found here.
“I'm astonished by the proposition of our friend, the Senator from Connecticut, that you can be on a secret watch list by the federal government and, just by virtue of this secret listing of an individual on a government watch list, you can be denied some of your core constitutional rights without any necessity of the government establishing probable cause or producing any evidence that would justify the denial of a core constitutional right.”
“The Senator has mischaracterized the amendment that I proposed last week and which I've now offered by unanimous consent. What would happen is if an individual on the watch list goes in to purchase a gun, there would be the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which would then access the watch list. And if the Department of Justice was worried based on that notice that somebody was attempting to buy a gun, then they could intervene for 72 hours to stop the individual from purchasing the gun. If they were worried about this individual further, they could go to court and produce before a federal judge evidence to justify the detention of that individual to take them off the street.”
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