Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (FL) defended his Thursday vote against denying guns to those on the no-fly list because the federal database “has a significant number of errors.”
Rubio suggested on Sunday’s episode of “State Of The Union” that the no-fly list is impeding too many law-abiding citizens from purchasing a gun.
“They shouldn’t be used as a tool to impede 700,000 Americans or potential Americans — people on that list from having access to be able to fully utilize their Second Amendment rights,” Rubio told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“Because there are, the majority of people on the no-fly list are often times people that basically just have the same name as somebody else who don’t belong on the no-fly list,” Rubio said.
“That’s not a perfect database,” he added.
On the other hand, Ohio Gov. John Kasich said during the same broadcast that preventing people on watch-lists from getting a weapon is “common sense” and investigators should be able to “exploit all the information that we can possibly get.”
Then Kasich suggested that people tracked by federal databases shouldn’t be allowed to know they are on federal watch lists.
“Of course it makes common sense to say that if you’re on a terror watch list that you shouldn’t be able to go out and get a gun, although you will be able to get it illegally,” Kasich said. “But what we have to deal with is the fact that we don’t want to tip somebody off that they’re under review and that we could be gathering critical information to disrupt the plot.”
