Imagine if the federal government suspended your right to your faith, your right to assemble and your right to speak your mind based on your inclusion on a secret list of American citizens with no prior due process and no open explanation of how you got on that list or how you can get off of it.

Absurd, right? So, why is it absurd to apply that scenario to your 1st amendment rights, but it’s “common sense” when it comes to your 2nd amendment rights?

The idea goes beyond absurd and borders on dangerous or even tyrannical when you discover that the Democrats (the party pushing for this latest constitutional infringement) aren’t even being forthcoming about the secret list they plan to use.

You keep hearing “No-fly/No buy” because, you know, it rhymes. And if a bill infringing on your constitutional rights rhymes like a Dr. Seuss book, apparently it’s more palatable. “No-fly/No buy” suggests that the “No-fly” list would be the list used to deny a citizen the right to purchase or possess a fire arm. But, is that the case?

Our buddy Gabriel Malor at The Federalist has a great break-down on many aspects of the obfuscation the Democrats are employing in their push for this bill. You should read the whole post, but I’d like to bring your attention to this passage:

The no-fly list is not the same thing as the terrorist watch list. The no-fly has roughly 40,000 names on it and many of them are not the names of U.S. citizens. By contrast, the terrorist watch list has more than a million names on it (we can’t know the actual number). The legislation Democrats are pushing relies on a definition similar, but not identical, to the one used to create the terrorist watch list on a rolling basis. It has nothing to do with the no-fly list.

He’s absolutely right about that. In fact, last year Roll Call pointed out that Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), one of the leading proponents of any gun control law you’ve ever heard of, admitted (through an aide) she was purposely clouding the issue on the various lists in play:

But a Feinstein aide, who spoke anonymously to be candid, said her boss always has targeted the larger list. The aide pointed out that database includes the no-fly list and several others that are maintained by security agencies such as the FBI and National Counterterrorism Center.

But the aide said Feinstein has sometimes referred to the no-fly database rather than the broader one her legislation actually covers for this reason: “That’s more relatable to the average person — people have heard of the no-fly list, not necessarily [ones like] the National Counterterrorism Center’s TIDE database.

“I’d imagine that’s why White House officials have referred to no-fly as well,” the aide said.

This is not a small point. There are multiple secret lists of individuals suspected of various, nefarious behaviors. They range from direct links and communication with terror networks to merely being reported to law enforcement for making a suspicious statement. Not every person on these lists fall under the “If you’re too dangerous to fly on a plane, you shouldn’t be able to get a gun” rhetorical umbrella.

But the Democrats are purposely employing the name of the narrowest list, the “No fly” list, in their arguments for this rights-infringing legislation, while they have every intention of casting the widest net possible infringing on the rights (2nd, 5th and 14th amendment) of law abiding Americans.

Even the left-leaning FactCheck website called the Democrats out on this lie.

The largest of the databases is the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, which included 1.1 million people as of December 2013. The second is the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database, which is referred to simply as the Terrorist Watchlist, and contained about 800,000 names, Christopher M. Piehota, the Terrorist Screening Center director, said in congressional testimony on Sept. 18, 2014. The no-fly list is a part of that database. It contains about 64,000 names, according to Piehota’s testimony.

So, while Clinton said the measure applied to suspected terrorists on the no-fly list, that’s only 64,000 names. It actually would have applied to well over 1 million people who are on government watch lists. Republicans defeated the amendment in early December.

If the proposed bill really only dealt with the 64,000 people currently denied immediate access to a commercial airliner, perhaps some compromise measure between Democrats and Republicans could be struck. But, clearly, the Democrats aren’t looking to actually get anything done. They are looking for a fund-raising issue and a divisive wedge issue to polarize Republicans and those of us who crave our liberty over pretty much everything else.

So to have their issue and to get lots of loving media coverage, they are lying to you.