Law enforcement needs to establish a "special unit" that focuses soley on putting terror suspects on a no-guns list – even if there's no evidence to prosecute them for a terror crime, legal scholar Alan Dershowitz tells
Newsmax TV.
In a Tuesday interview with "Newsmax Prime" host Miranda Khan, the Harvard Law professor said the "FBI essentially thinks its job is to prosecute cases."
Dershowitz noted
the FBI looked at Orlando, Fla., shooter Omar Mateen "twice — and said there isn't enough to prosecute."
"There may well have been enough to restrict his ability to buy guns," he said. "There should be a special unit that isn't looking for enough evidence to prosecute… but is looking for enough evidence to make sure the person is on a list, that a person is never ever allowed to purchase a gun, certainly not an automatic or semi-automatic weapon."
Yet, Dershowitz said, "it's awfully hard to criticize" the agency for "having potentially missed one."
"The FBI has so much on its plate," he said.
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Dershowitz added that Mateen's wife, Noor Salman –
now reportedly under investigation in the case – is not committing a criminal act for failing to report what she knew.
"Knowledge alone and failure to report is not a crime," he declared. "Maybe it should be, and in some parts of Europe it is."
"We have to worry about not becoming too intrusive on marital relationships," he added. "But these are issues we have to confront in an age of lots of lone wolves out there" and if "somebody out there knows them and their legal responsibility."