Upending regular order, Democrats and a few Republicans held the Senate floor for more than 15-hours on Wednesday and early Thursday morning to highlight the need for gun control measures in the wake of the recent mass shooting in Orlando.
Led by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the maneuver could, however, yield troubling outcomes for those concerned about the increasing size of the national security state and its infringement on civil liberties–those with implications beyond “the right to keep and bear arms.”
Just after 2 A.M. on Thursday morning, Murphy wrapped up his “filibuster,” claiming he was assured by Senate leadership that it would allow votes on two gun control measures. One would expand background checks for all firearm purchases online and at gun shows. The second would prohibit individuals in the government’s terrorist screening databases from purchasing guns.
Legislation expanding background checks has previously been defeated in the Senate—most recently after last December’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif. Although it’s unlikely the measure will pass this time around either, an effort to ban firearm purchases to suspected terrorists could garner consensus among Senators.
Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) have competing proposals to that end.
Feinstein’s bill would bar a person whose name is on the “no-fly list” or any federal terrorist watchlist currently or within the last five years from buying a firearm.
Cornyn’s legislation would inject some form of due process in the matter by delaying gun purchases to suspected terrorists for 72 hours. During that time, the Justice Department would have to justify to a judge why the individual is a threat. His bill has the support of the National Rifle Association.
The two senators are currently negotiating a compromise measure. “She approached him and they’re talking,” a Republican aide told the Washington Examiner.
“Nobody wants terrorists to have firearms,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Wednesday. “We are open to serious suggestions from the experts as to what we might be able to do to be helpful.”
This could mark a breakthrough for Democrats, who have long sought any form of gun control measures to stem the epidemic of mass shootings in the US.
Tying gun reform to the trappings of the national security state, however, worries civil rights groups.
The government’s suspected terrorist databases—known Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE)—contain roughly 1.1 million names, including tens of thousands of Americans. A subset of that database, the no-fly list, catalogs almost 50,000 people.
“What we have today is a massive watch listing system based on vague and over broad criteria that risks stigmatizing hundreds of thousands of people, including Americans, as known or suspected terrorists based on secret evidence and without a meaningful process to challenge government error and clear their names,” Hina Shamsi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s national security project told McClatchy News.
The databases have reportedly even been used to browbeat Muslim Americans into spying on their communities. The Council on American–Islamic Relations argued just that, in filing suit against the US government on behalf of people who say they were improperly flagged.
The government has “utilized the watchlist, not as a tool to enhance aviation and border security, but as a bludgeon to coerce American Muslims into becoming informants or forgoing the exercise of their rights, such as the right to have an attorney present during law enforcement questioning,” CAIR stated in court filings.
Both the expanded background checks and terror watch list gun control measures are likely to be considered as amendments to a Justice Department spending bill, which is currently under consideration in the upper chamber.
