Dear Editor:

Our Second Amendment right is under attack continually from those on the left who seek to undermine our U.S. Constitution. The latest attempt is from President Obama who wants to deny the sale of firearms to anyone on the no-fly list.

This plan is fraught with problems for all liberty loving citizens. First, the no-fly list has been problematic since its inception. I read a recent news article where the ACLU sued DHS on behalf of a Muslim American whose name had been added to the list through a simple clerical mistake, transferring the person’s name from one list to another. There are virtually no safeguards, meaning any citizen can wind up on the list for no apparent reason, effectively denying the citizen “due process.” Any time the citizen is denied “due process,” the whole foundation of our Constitutional republic becomes cracked and therefore weakened.

Secondly, if the government can deny a firearm to a citizen on the no-fly list, what else can be denied? How about the citizen’s right to freedom of speech, the press, or, God forbid, religion? Thanks to Mr. Trump, that one has received a lot of press lately.

If President Obama gets away with denying a firearm to someone because they are on the no-fly list and Mr. Trump gets elected as our next president, will he not be able to use the same precedent to bar Muslims from entering America, which will no longer be the greatest nation ever?

Thirdly, this policy will do nothing to curb gun violence. Drug dealers and street gang thugs do not go to firearms dealers or gun shows as they already know they can not pass the background check. With Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C. — just to name a few U.S. cities with weekend murders in double digits — there’s a mass killing of at least 30 victims every weekend.

President Obama admitted on nationwide TV that being listed on the no-fly list would not prevent many of the gun violence events he mentioned in his address. Could it be time to combat gun violence by merely enforcing the laws already on the books

Dave Ricker

Wiscasset