Senate Democrats are pushing a bill to ban anyone on the no-fly list or terrorist watch list from being able to purchase a firearm.
There is a lot of criticism of the proposal over due process and transparency concerns, which I think are valid, but not my point in this thread.
The FBI is also concerned that this proposal would tip off suspected terrorists that they’re being watched or investigated (“Hey, if you think the FBI may be on to your plan, go try to purchase a gun. If they deny you because you’re on the no-fly list, then watch out, because they’re probably watching you.”). Also not my point.
I want to focus on how often those lists are wrong, either including people that aren’t terrorists (i.e. the late Senator Ted Kennedy) or more importantly, not including people that are actual terrorists. The government is actually terrible at identifying real terrorists.
Nidal Hassan was investigated by the FBI and they determined he wasn’t a threat. Oops.
Russia’s FSB warned the FBI that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a follower of radical Islam. He had managed to get into TIDE, but wasn’t included in the “no-fly list”, presumably because after he was interviewed by the FBI they didn’t have sufficient concerns about him to place him there. As far as I understand Feinstein’s proposal, he still would have been able to buy a gun if her proposal had been in effect back then. His brother Dzhokhar was granted citizenship just a few months before blowing up the Boston Marathon. Oops again.
Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik (San Bernadino shooters) don’t appear to have been on any watch list. We granted Malik a visa just months before the attack. The process supposedly involves a national security check against the FBI databases, so she presumably wasn’t in the database either. Oops again.
There are plenty of other examples, but I’m tired of digging up the details of all of them: why do we, as a country, suck so hard at identifying terrorists and getting them on the watch list? What could be done to improve the process? Is the watch list useful for anything besides toilet paper, or should the whole dismal project be abandoned?