In the days following the deadliest mass shooting in American history, news networks and social media outlets have been ablaze with demands for intervention by a government which has, for the most part, been entirely too inactive for the better part of a decade; the NRA effectively has its hand clasped over the mouths of any Republican congressmen with the sense to attempt the passage of a bill that might even slightly reduce the availability of firearms, and Democrats have too little representation in this current iteration of Congress to have any hope of introducing meaningful change without bipartisan support. At the center of the discussion about potential legislative changes is a bill that was shot down back in December of last year, before ever reaching the president’s desk—a bill that would have made the shooter, Omar Mateen, ineligible to purchase an assault weapon due to his inclusion on the FBI’s terror watch list. At least, that’s the talking point being pushed by Hillary Clinton, who has stated “we should all be able to agree on a few essential things,” such as “if the FBI is watching you for a suspected terrorist link, you shouldn’t be able to just go buy a gun with no questions asked.” But is she right?

Despite point after counterpoint being made about how this law might or might not have stopped Mateen from being able to purchase the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle used during the Pulse massacre in Orlando, surprisingly little discussion has taken place on one absolutely essential issue—should the FBI have the kind of power that the bill in question, H.R. 3762, would have provided it with? If you ask me, the answer is no, and this kind of overreach by the FBI would certainly raise a multitude of legal questions and possibly even be struck down if its constitutionality were challenged.

According to the framework that American federal law currently exists in, the Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees American citizens the right to bear arms. This is not to say that the Supreme Court was absolutely correct in their interpretation of the amendment—the right to own weapons is exclusively discussed in the constitution as a matter of resistance against foreign invaders (“being necessary to the security of a free State”), and only in the context of a militia rather than individual citizens who are not themselves part of an organized defense. But be that as it may, under the current interpretation of the Second Amendment given to us in the case District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008, ownership of firearms is a fundamental right possessed by American citizens.

A person does not actually need to be charged with any crime to be placed on the terror watch list. Therefore, revoking the ability of an individual to purchase a firearm based on a suspected, unsubstantiated link to a terrorist organization is, legally speaking, a circumvention of the individual’s right to due process. Clinton attempted to make the plan seem logical by comparing it to the no-fly list - a list which includes 64,000 names, as opposed to 800,000 on the FBI terror watch list according to FactCheck.org. Sure, the prospect of almost a million people with suspected terrorist links being allowed to purchase firearms is terrifying, but almost as distressing to me is what this precedent would do to American civil liberties.

Unlike flying, gun ownership is a fundamental right according to the American legal system’s interpretation of the Constitution, right alongside the freedom to practice whatever religion one desires and the liberty to speak freely without fear of government intervention; if this law would have allowed the government to suspend an individual’s right to free speech without first presenting evidence or trying the person in court, would we really be okay with it even if it reduced the ability for terrorists to spread their message? Would we be content with the government depriving people of their right to advocate for a chosen cause, just because of their being placed on a secret list that the people do not have access to? Would we forbid a person from attending a place of worship? Again, I’m not saying I think the Supreme Court was correct. Their opinion was, in my mind, completely illogical and out of step with what the amendment actually says about the right to own a gun—but my thinking is that even if it’s wrong, it doesn’t make it okay to ignore what are ostensibly the rights of citizens.

It’s deeply uncomfortable to take this position, I assure you. I don’t like being the person advocating for the rights of people like Omar Mateen to buy a weapon that enables them to kill 49 people before they can be stopped, but we have to remember that giving the government the ability to work around the protections we give ourselves is setting an extremely dangerous precedent in terms of government transparency and due process. This doesn’t mean we have to abandon the pursuit of something better in the way of gun control—it just means we have more work to do than we thought. H.R. 3762 would have been a shortcut that might have led us into even more treacherous and questionable legal territory. Instead, let’s work on fixing the real problem—the interpretation of the Second Amendment that made the purchasing of firearms so simple in the first place.