If you are a gun owner who receives a Social Security disability check from the U.S. Treasury but you have chosen, for whatever reason, to have someone help you manage your finances, whether you are just forgetful or not good at keeping your checkbook balanced, and have asked for help from a family member or another fiduciary, the Obama administration has a plan in the works to take your guns away from you.
The Executive Order is part of the President’s plan to strengthen gun control after the shooting incident at Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012, when twenty school children were massacred by a young man from the community.
The plan, which is among 23 executive orders issued by the President to the Department of Justice, could affect millions whose disability payments are handled by others in an effort to bring the Social Security Administration into line with laws that prevent gun sales to felons, drug addicts, illegal immigrants and others.
It is consistent with Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s written philosophy that “guns are a health care issue.” In an interview with NPR he stated that “violence of all kinds is a public health issue” and that he wanted to “find a way that we can reduce violence in America.”
Murthy was sworn in as Surgeon General in April. In early June Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced legislation to authorize the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to give $60 million tax-payer dollars to anti-gun activists to conduct research attempting to show gun violence is a disease.
The language of federal gun laws restricts gun ownership to people unable to manage their own affairs due to “marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition or disease.”
Identification of disability check recipients would come about through the use of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and would use the same standard and criteria as the Department of Veterans Affairs. Approximately 4.2 million adults receive monthly benefits that are managed by “representative payees”.
The ban would keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people but would also include people who have a bad memory or a hard time balancing a checkbook due to their age, even if there’s never been a question raised about them or they have never been so much as accused of a crime.
The background check for gun ownership was started in 1993 by Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, named for James Brady, White House Press Secretary, who was partially paralyzed after being shot in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.
The NICBCS maintains databases containing more than 13 million records of felons, illegal immigrants, fugitives, dishonorably discharged service members, drug addicts and domestic abusers.
Gun stores use the NICBCS at the point of sale and are required to run names of potential buyers through a computerized check system. State agencies, local police and federal agencies are also required to enter names into the databases but the system has proved to have loopholes and inconsistent reporting.
The Executive Order referred to in this column requires the DOJ to ensure federal agencies are complying with existing law on reporting to the NICBCS. The VA has been entering names into the system since its beginning. About 177,000 veterans and survivors of veterans are in the system.
The VA reports names under a category in the gun control regulations known as “adjudicated as mental defective” with the only criterion being that somebody has been appointed a fiduciary. More than half of the names on the VA list are people 80 years of age or older and suffering from dementia, but that category also includes anybody found by a “court, board, commission, or other lawful authority” to be lacking “the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs” for a wide variety of reasons.
Under the Executive Order, Social Security would be required to report names under the same “mental defective” category. About 2.7 million are now receiving disability payments for mental health problems, a potentially higher risk category for gun ownership. There are 1.5 million more who have finances handled by others for a variety of reasons.
Dr. Marc Rosen, a Yale psychiatrist, who has studied how veterans with mental health problems manage their money, says just because someone has been judged incapable of managing their funds does not mean they are dangerous or violent or unsafe.
He said some vets may avoid seeking help for mental health problems out of fear they would have to give up their guns.
Art Ne’eman, a member of the National Council on Disability, would oppose any policy that used assignment of a “representative payee” as a basis to take any fundamental right from people with disabilities.
The Department of Justice has been drafting its policy outside of public view, and until last week even the NRA was unaware of it. Chris W. Cox, Chief Lobbyist of the NRA, issued the following statement: “If the Obama administration attempts to deny millions of law-abiding citizens their constitutional rights by executive fiat, the NRA stands ready to pursue all available avenues to stop them in their tracks.”
House and Senate versions of the Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act are currently pending in the U.S. Congress. The language of the Act which deals solely with the Veterans Administration but would probably be amended to include the Social Security Administration under the Executive Order dealing with disability benefit check recipients reads as follows:
(This Act) “ Prohibits, in any case arising out of the administration of laws and benefits by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA), any person who is mentally incapacitated, deemed mentally incompetent, or experiencing an extended loss of consciousness from being considered adjudicated as a mental defective for purposes of the right to receive or transport firearms without the order or finding of a judicial authority of competent jurisdiction that such person is a danger to himself or herself or others.”
The Executive Order is part of the President’s plan to strengthen gun control after the shooting incident at Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012, when twenty school children were massacred by a young man from the community.
The plan, which is among 23 executive orders issued by the President to the Department of Justice, could affect millions whose disability payments are handled by others in an effort to bring the Social Security Administration into line with laws that prevent gun sales to felons, drug addicts, illegal immigrants and others.
It is consistent with Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s written philosophy that “guns are a health care issue.” In an interview with NPR he stated that “violence of all kinds is a public health issue” and that he wanted to “find a way that we can reduce violence in America.”
Murthy was sworn in as Surgeon General in April. In early June Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced legislation to authorize the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to give $60 million tax-payer dollars to anti-gun activists to conduct research attempting to show gun violence is a disease.
The language of federal gun laws restricts gun ownership to people unable to manage their own affairs due to “marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition or disease.”
Identification of disability check recipients would come about through the use of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and would use the same standard and criteria as the Department of Veterans Affairs. Approximately 4.2 million adults receive monthly benefits that are managed by “representative payees”.
The ban would keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people but would also include people who have a bad memory or a hard time balancing a checkbook due to their age, even if there’s never been a question raised about them or they have never been so much as accused of a crime.
The background check for gun ownership was started in 1993 by Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, named for James Brady, White House Press Secretary, who was partially paralyzed after being shot in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.
The NICBCS maintains databases containing more than 13 million records of felons, illegal immigrants, fugitives, dishonorably discharged service members, drug addicts and domestic abusers.
Gun stores use the NICBCS at the point of sale and are required to run names of potential buyers through a computerized check system. State agencies, local police and federal agencies are also required to enter names into the databases but the system has proved to have loopholes and inconsistent reporting.
The Executive Order referred to in this column requires the DOJ to ensure federal agencies are complying with existing law on reporting to the NICBCS. The VA has been entering names into the system since its beginning. About 177,000 veterans and survivors of veterans are in the system.
The VA reports names under a category in the gun control regulations known as “adjudicated as mental defective” with the only criterion being that somebody has been appointed a fiduciary. More than half of the names on the VA list are people 80 years of age or older and suffering from dementia, but that category also includes anybody found by a “court, board, commission, or other lawful authority” to be lacking “the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs” for a wide variety of reasons.
Under the Executive Order, Social Security would be required to report names under the same “mental defective” category. About 2.7 million are now receiving disability payments for mental health problems, a potentially higher risk category for gun ownership. There are 1.5 million more who have finances handled by others for a variety of reasons.
Dr. Marc Rosen, a Yale psychiatrist, who has studied how veterans with mental health problems manage their money, says just because someone has been judged incapable of managing their funds does not mean they are dangerous or violent or unsafe.
He said some vets may avoid seeking help for mental health problems out of fear they would have to give up their guns.
Art Ne’eman, a member of the National Council on Disability, would oppose any policy that used assignment of a “representative payee” as a basis to take any fundamental right from people with disabilities.
The Department of Justice has been drafting its policy outside of public view, and until last week even the NRA was unaware of it. Chris W. Cox, Chief Lobbyist of the NRA, issued the following statement: “If the Obama administration attempts to deny millions of law-abiding citizens their constitutional rights by executive fiat, the NRA stands ready to pursue all available avenues to stop them in their tracks.”
House and Senate versions of the Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act are currently pending in the U.S. Congress. The language of the Act which deals solely with the Veterans Administration but would probably be amended to include the Social Security Administration under the Executive Order dealing with disability benefit check recipients reads as follows:
(This Act) “ Prohibits, in any case arising out of the administration of laws and benefits by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA), any person who is mentally incapacitated, deemed mentally incompetent, or experiencing an extended loss of consciousness from being considered adjudicated as a mental defective for purposes of the right to receive or transport firearms without the order or finding of a judicial authority of competent jurisdiction that such person is a danger to himself or herself or others.”
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