The White House is again working to garner approval for the controversial UN Arms Treaty and the former NSA director is calling gun control an underused counter-terror tool.
That means Americans are probably going to be hearing justifications for increased gun control mirroring the anti-terror justifications which paved the way for runaway government surveillance in the post-9/11 world.
“It will contribute to international peace and security, will strengthen the legitimate international trade in conventional arms, and is fully consistent with rights of U.S. citizens (including those secured by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution),” Obama said as he made a last ditch effort to forward the UN treaty last week.
The treaty is controversial because its opponents believe it could provide loopholes to new U.S. gun control laws based on UN firearm stipulations.
The Obama administration, however, has maintained that the treaty would simply make it harder for terrorists throughout the world to obtain small arms illegally.
Meanwhile, former NSA head Michael Hayden suggested recently that the U.S. government’s spying capabilities are inadequate to prevent terror attacks, so increased gun control should be a next step in the War on Terror.
Hayden added: “We could probably do more things that’ll squeeze your privacy a bit, to give us a marginally higher probability that we could have caught the Orlando guy prior to the attack, but not much.”
Hayden said that the inability to predict certain attacks should open the door for more firearm laws.
“Rather than jigger the Fourth Amendment… why don’t you take a look at the Second,” the former NSA chief said. “And why don’t we begin to wonder about making the guy less efficient when he actually conducts the event that I told you I probably [will] not get much more capable of predicting in the first place.”
There “might be some guns out there that nobody should be able to buy,” he added.