S832,
I find your reasoning and rationale to be weak, flawed and unacceptable in a free society.
if he is going to be the pilot on any plane I am on - I certainly would want an investigation pursued, pilots should need to be squeaky clean.
Pilots are monitored by their employers quite closely. I can assure you, if a pilot gets into trouble with the law, the airline knows about it quite fast.
But it's not the airline
pilots that have caused havoc, but the passengers. Suppose we turn it around and say all of the
passengers have to be squeaky clean? Can
you pass that test? Ever had contact with police? Ever filed a police report? Ever been arrested or detained even if no charges were filed? Ever declared bankruptcy? Ever had a house foreclosed or property seized for non payment? Take a train or drive, then, you're not clean enough to fly.
As far as the airlines go, your safety is their responsibility only in as far as their services are required. That means a good pilot, mechanically sound aircraft, quality fuel, good maintenance procedures and the flight crew follows FAA rules. The airline is NOT responsible for terrorist getting aboard (that's TSA's fault) nor are they responsible for your personal safety in the terminal.
Temporarily preventing someone from flying a plane isn't what I would consider loss of liberty,
Preventing someone from earning a living is not a loss of liberty? WTF do
you do for a living? Could you find another job, "temporarily" that'll
replace your income if some gov't bureaucrat said you couldn't work in your field? How long can the gov't drag their feet before giving
permission for you to pursue your chosen career?
That's not how this country is supposed to work.
Your idea of "other people" losing their liberties at the whim of a gov't list or bureaucracy is callous and, I daresay, un-American. If a person is so "dangerous" or "suspect" in their motives that they cannot board an airplane, then why are they not charged with some crime? Or at least held and interrogated by TSA/FBI? Why must people
prove their innocence when the burden of accusations, constitutionally, is on the government?
Most of the NICS checks are fine. There is absolutely nothing wrong with NICS, I can't fathom as to why anyone is against background checks.
Simply because people do not trust the government. The NICS system was supposed to destroy ALL inquiries within 24 hours to prevent record keeping of who's bought a gun. Only denials could be kept. But AG Reno decided that the law didn't preclude DOJ from keeping a "sampling" to run "integrity checks" (whatever those might be) on the system.
But as someone who's been in the computer field over 30 years, I can tell you that any electronic data can be copied and shunted to another system for later use in building a database. For example, point of sale systems approving credit cards have to process lots of transactions through a clearing house very fast. But nothing stops a company from sending a 2nd transmission to an in-house server so it can compile a database of card transactions (without the card-numbers I might add) for statistical use. The same could be done (and probably has been done) with NICS. Incoming transactions are processed and approved, but the system sends two message out - one to the FFL for approval and the other to a database machine with all the information, including the approval/denial. That database can be further processed into a central database of gun owners. And all of this can happen in the time it takes me to type the word
illegal.
Add this: There is NO OTHER RIGHT in the constitution for which the government can force you to first obtain their permission to exercise that right.
Rights cannot be subject to government approval. That is exactly what the NICS system does. It was agreed to as a compromise to avoid longer waiting periods for firearms purchases. Agreed, keeping guns out the the hands of criminals is a good cause. But criminals seldom buy guns at retail. They buy them on the street from people who steal them or engage in straw-man purchases. Thus the gov't curtails
everyone's liberties to catch the very few (and dumb) criminals who try to buy one from a dealer.