New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday not all American citizens have “the legal or Constitutional right to have a gun.”
Cuomo came on CNN’s “New Day” to make his case for banning anyone on the U.S. terror watch list from owning guns in his state. He told Alisyn Camerota, “If the federal government has information that says you are a suspected of terrorism, so much so that you can’t step on a plane, then you should not be allowed to buy a gun and pull a trigger.”
The U.S. Senate recently voted down legislation sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, that would have banned people on the FBI’s terror watch list from buying firearms.
Camerota pointed to critics like Sen. Rand Paul, who she had spoken to earlier about the same issue. Paul questioned whether people like Ted Kennedy and Cat Stevens who were mistakenly placed on the terror list should lose “their constitutional rights over a mistake.”
“There is no perfect list,” Cuomo told Camerota. “There is a list of people who have been mentally ill. I am sure there are mistakes on those lists. That doesn’t mean you let everybody buy a gun because maybe there was a mistake on a list.”
“We have people in the country who are suspected of terrorism and who right now can’t step on a plane, but can buy a gun — that is ludicrous.”